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Comment I don't originate much, (Score 1) 210

but I comment a lot

The place is full of vertical groups - photographers, loads of technical (even iPhans), Political discussions from the US far right to the rest of the planets left, news about anything and everything from everywhere and no doubt stuff that I am not interested in and so have ignored...
So this is yet another posting from someone who has not really checked out the system.

Comment Re:Something Truly Innovative (Score 1) 162

Bill Gates was definitely interested in transforming computing. You can criticize his methods, but his company advanced the commoditization of computers immensely, to the great advantage of the world. Could you have done better?

Gates has made much more of a positive contribution to technology than Jobs. Having had to deal with the inrush of his products may have kept me busy (Yes I am not 25 anymore either) but he played a major part in the ubiquity of IT nowadays.

Also Gates comes from actually "doing" technology. He coded, Jobs did not. Steve Jobs, as has been said here, was a salesman. He was also a disigner of cool looking stuff. It was his attitudes that made Apple devices the thing that wannabe beautiful people lusted after. It was his preferences that put form ahead of function and so on...

Comment Missing Option (Score 1) 97

WTF would I want a laptop for?

I have a work PC, a home PC, a Work Android Tablet and my own Android Tablet. I think that covers every need. Android has a very nice Remote Desktop Connection app - from Microsoft. (It also exists for iThings.) This lets me remote to my work desktop the same as any laptop. I get Exchange based email on the work tablet and there are loads of apps that allow me access to network storage. I presume that iOS users will have a few as well.

What is the point of a laptop - other than to give me eye strain and RSI?

The battery on my work tablet lasts longer than a working day. My own tablet lasts from about 2.5 hours if playing certain games to over a week if charged and left on a shelf while I am away.

Comment Being like 96% of humanity... (Score 2) 409

I am not from the USA and have never considered most of your countryfolk to be aware of where the world is far less what is happening in it. I have seem the occasional clip of one of your talking heads and the BBC sometimes has them on for insights into what is happening in your country. Perhaps we just get the amateurs talking to the foreign press.

The area around Chernobyl and Pripyat is fast becoming the best collection of natural history in Europe if not the world. The videos and pictures from there vary from the sombre to the absolutely fantastic. No multinational (read US corporation) is going to try and build factories, take wood or anything else from there. Animals killed there and sold elsewhere are easy to identify. Radioactivity is higher than normal all over it but very little of it now is unsafe for the next 100,000 years.

There is plenty on the web about it - my early favourite was http://www.kiddofspeed.com/ although there are occasional questions as to whether they are real.

.

Comment When I Google someone (Score 1) 193

I need to be able to look up all information about someone. If I didn't, I wouldn't need the internet. I would just ask them to attach anything they felt I should know to their application.

So if they break Google, I will need another search engine. It may need to be run from somewhere outside the control of the EU, USA, NSA, FBI and so on..
Perhaps there is someone in Russia who knows about computers?

I'll stick to the EU over the USA though. Less militaristic and their silliest ideas are aimed for human beings and against corporates. At least they want us to think they are trying...

Comment Re:yes but we're a group of islands in the Atlanti (Score 1) 90

... people get protective about windfarms getting built on land

The problem sometimes is that the people from the location are all for it but NIMBYs are brought in specially.

I Come from further north than Aberdeen. In Orkney, we have had wind turbines for decades but various people would come from central or southern England and try to drum up opposition. I once had some on my (parents) doorstep. They told me about the harm that these things would do to me and how noisy they were. I declined and they moved on. I don't remember a single friend or relative who was interested in their stories.

Comment Re:Unsolved problems (Score 1) 90

I know. Van Braun had so many of his V1 rockets crash into England before we finally managed to get a rocket into space!

That's a new one! I only knew about the pulse jet propelled V1s. The only WWII Von Braun rockets most of us had heard of were the V2s.

As far as is known, no rocket propelled V1s ever crashed into England, or anywhere else for that matter.
Perhaps they all went into space....

Comment As a Brit (Score 2) 316

I can think of various things that should be itemised as nasty. I am all for letting crazies speak but I would like them and everyone else to know how many people think they are dodgy,

"What type of things" you might ask "would I want to identify as hateful?"
You could start with our most hate filled politics. We have little as far right as you guys but there ae simple acronyms for some of the worst - ECDL, BNP, UKIP and the like. Their right to say things should not be restricted but everyone going to their sites should receive a reminder whenever they go to their web sites that these people are to be examined very carefully as some of them are completely nuts and even the mildest of them may well be the bunch of "fruitcases" that they were described as!

If there was a "Really Crazy" button that we could report groups from those to Home Secretaries who want to mess us up, that would be really useful...

Comment For the rest of us (Score 4, Interesting) 299

The majority of us did not have money to spare for Macs. I have no doubt that they were the best personal computers around. I used them.

For less expensive computers, there was the BASIC interpreter. Not as WYSIWYG or simple and Beginners need to think when coding, even at that level. It also had the advantage of being close to a standard untill MS teurned it into QBasic then dumped it.

BASIC is what we need again but standardised and improved a lot.

Comment Better than a wtch (Score 1) 38

This seems so much more interesting than a watch.
I have not worn a watch for years. I can't at work because I work in a hospital. Outside work, I don't bother because I can get the time off my phone or a clock etc.
Augmented reality could be useful in all sorts of jobs and leisure activities.

So far, the only wearable technology I use is a stereo in-ear bluetooth headset.

Comment Re:That's the way the gyoza goes (Score 1) 331

Nothing makes me sadder than idiots who think that people who own guns all want to kill kids at school

That is what is called a Straw Man argument. Nobody said that.

What has been said and merits repeating is that the result of lots of guns is lots of dead innocents. The less guns around, the less people get shot.
The USA has many more armed civilians than, say, Japan or the UK. It has a lot more gun accidents per 1,000 head of population too. It is no freer than them. It just has a better sounding constitution that the moneyed ignore.

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