Insane hardware

Haha. I love this little snippet from the technology report on CCP games and how they have recently addressed some data transfer issues with their Eve SciFi online game:

EVE Online's underlying storage bottleneck is a classic problem with Online Transaction Processing. 10,000+ users accessing account information, warping across the galaxy, buying goods from black-market free-lance smugglers and upgrading their mining frigates to assault cruisers all at the same time puts immense stress on disk-based storage.

Google GDrive?

Now this is interesting:

Web giant Google is planning a massive online storage facility to encompass all users' files, it is reported.

Access to all your data from anywhere, using "any device". It's not an official release from the google people so keep it under your hats.

Late to the party is fine and dandy. Turning up with a bottle of Blue Nun is not

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. The Apple iPod is an ok device made special by good design (second only to iRiver so well done Apple). The Apple Shuffle is a crap device made special by the original iPod being quite good. Like an audience watching a good comedian, his last joke was a cracker allowing him to ride out the crap joke he just told because the audience is on his side and still happy. They laugh for him.

Now Apple have released the Rokr, a mobile phone that can play up to 100 tunes randomly.

The audience falls silent (or they would do if they weren't so love struck).

Danger! Danger! (FX: Flappy armed robot voice)

Microsoft says:

"Time is running out!"

"Please note that the mechanism to temporarily disable delivery of Windows XP SP2 is only available for a period of 240 days (eight months) from August 16, 2004. At the end of this period (after April 12, 2005), Windows XP SP2 will be delivered to all Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 1 systems."

In their dreams.

I do wonder, however, how long it is before we can't turn off such autoupdate features permanently.

I use third party tools to do most of my stuff on my main PC at home and have no need for continuing Microsoft code injections. Just let them try and get their code past my third party firewall - they wouldn't know where to begin.

The reasons why this is such an issue for me are wide and varied but primarily they are from experience and from experience. Firstly, if something is working to my satisfaction I need compelling arguments to make me change my ways. Secondly, the last time I received an update from microsoft the online game that I was involved in stopped working. A fine balance of graphics card, graphics drivers, usb filter drivers and Direct X code was destroyed, as one might destroy a particularly impressive house of cards.

Lord alone knows what extra compelling features Mircosoft delivered to me with that payload but I can tell you this; no virus has ever caused me so much trouble.

What lurks inside your keyboard?

I can't help feeling that some people have too much time on their hands. This clearly does not apply to these guys who have helped to answer the very important question of what lurks inside your keyboard?:

After having dissected the sample keyboards, collected dirt and debris were put under the scope to find out exactly what kind of stuff we have lurking under our keys. Findings were generally fatty, including (but not limited to): bread crumbs, traces of doughnuts, crisps, chips, marmalade, meat and sugar and salt crystals, as well as the obvious tea and coffee stains.

Experts are saying that we as a nation aren't eating enough healthy brain food during our working day, and are instead gorging ourselves on "fatty and unhealthy snacks".

Dodgy grub aside, RSSL also uncovered finger nail clippings and "unspecified body hairs." Hmm.

Eeew.

My crumbling world

My psion series 5mx palmtop computer finally popped its clogs this weekend. It seems that it has fallen victim to the dreaded ribbon cable problem which basically means the screen no longer works. This is not a fault that I can work around.

For those of you that do not know, the psion series 5mx is a brilliantly designed machine that went out of production some time back. The collection of features that it delivers make it unbeatable, even though it is a bit long in the tooth. It has a full office suite, diary, contacts, text editors, sketching software, voice recording, touch sensitive screen, alarms, database management system, games, spell checker, thesaurus, calculator, a port for an additional flash card, email (not that I use it), and a web browser (ditto) and a brilliant operating system called Epoch. That’s just out of the box. You can also install oodles of third party software.

Its two best features, however, are its astonishingly good slide out keyboard and its ability to turn on instantly. You really do have to see and use that keyboard to know what I mean. It’s fantastic.

So I really don’t have a choice but to get it repaired at a cost of around £80 plus postage. Shame, because I would much rather put that money towards a newer better machine but I can't because no such machine exists. Except, perhaps, the psion series 7 but that falls a little outside of the palmtop size range and is also no longer made.

Ernest provides a link to this, Perfect guide to disassemble Psion 5mx. Lots of pictures.

Alternatively I could use this guy who seems to offer a reasonable deal at £45 job done.

Consider this

You get home from work tonight to find that all TV services have suffered a disastrous breakdown. You have no TV and it takes a week to get it back up and running again.

Or

You get home from work tonight to find that the Internet has suffered a disastrous breakdown. You have no Internet access and it takes a week to get it up and running again.

Under which scenario would you feel less well informed.

We are, mainly, children of the TV revolution. Many of us were brought up relying on TV for entertainment and information and I for one would have found life without it (having had it) a very strange and isolating experience indeed.

However, I think things have changed.

It's almost as if...

...the Internet treats taxation as damage and routes around it.

The Internet, we love it.

On Tuesday this week, my good Lady googled for a replacement rear light cluster for our brand spanking new second hand folding camper. She emailed one of the companies that google moogled (or whatever the word is for a google result) and within 4 hours a very nice man from the company was on our doorstep with the correct part.

We paid him in cash and, in spite of the involvement of the Internet, no evil was involved.

Of course, this is just a fluke made possible by the proximity of the shop but without the moogling by google the path from part number to part would have been a much more stressful undertaking.

So again, the Internet, we love it!