Tory health crap alert

The scum bag Tories have been up to their usual tricks again lately. This time involving an individual who according to her had her NHS operation canceled seven times, only three times according to the NHS Trust. The Tories are of course using this woman as a political football - she denies it of course. From the BBC: Tory spokesman for the North West of England Chris Davenport said he had spent the day at Mrs Dixon's home because his party had "...

Thursday, 3 March 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith

Firefox fanboys

Back two or three years ago I was a solid Mozilla browser user. Mainly for the built in popup blocker and Java script controls, when Firebird (forerunner to Firefox) emerged I switched over to using that since I didn't need Mozilla's mail/news client etc. However when Microsoft released Service Pack 2, I switched back to IE, I much prefer the way IE renders pages, it's much nicer to have everything sized out first then rendered than having things chucked around the screen like Netscape based browsers....

Saturday, 26 February 2005 · 3 min · Paul Smith

Not the brightest spark

A few days ago now, while I was at work. Someone came up to me with a copy of Dead or Alive Ultimate, he said he'd like to return it because the graphics aren't "smooth". OK so I wandered over to the till area and checked the discs to make sure they were in mint condition, while I was doing this, he looked up and said, "I only played the first disc, didn't even touch the second disc"...

Tuesday, 22 February 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith

Broadband stupidity

Last month Demon, my ISP, introduced a new 1Mbps product range. HomeOffice 1000, priced at only £1 more then I'm currently paying for 500Kbps. Good deal if you ask me. Within a week I fax of a upgrade form. I wait 3 weeks hear nothing. Get onto them last night only to find out that the upgrade was put onto their system - but removed 2 days later. Phone them up today only to find out that 'Demon Express' cannot be upgraded to HomeOffice 1000, despite the fact that Demon Express Total (the newer product that is identical to Demon Express) can be....

Wednesday, 16 February 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith

Tell 'em where to go Ken

Ken Livingstone is once again under attack by the right-wing press. In this case the Evening Standard and it's sister paper the Daily Mail. What's he done this time? Called a journalist who had been pestering him and trying to get some kind of rise out of him someone who behaves like a "concentration camp guard". It turns out the journalist is Jewish, well so he claims, I wouldn't be surprised if it was entirely made up just to try and get some kind of story going on....

Wednesday, 16 February 2005 · 2 min · Paul Smith

Forza Motorsport down for May

Can't say I'm surprised at the month delay. Microsoft want to ensure this game hits the competition in one quick blow. For that it needs to be the best it can be. For those who don't know what Forza Motorsport is - it is the racing simulator. Some might compare it to Gran Turismo 4. But that's probably not a fair comparison, as it totally destroys Gran Turismo 4 - it's probably best to compare it to say Gran Turismo 9, of course if the series survives that long, actually you know what - I don't think PD could deliver all of this even if they took another 5 versions....

Friday, 4 February 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith

Poor quality digital radio

I've come across another of theses adverts for DAB radio, claiming that it's "crystal clear CD quality sound", more like muddy shite MPEG-2 garbage. How the hell can they get away with advertising it as CD quality? Most stations in the UK are broadcast @ 128kbps in MPEG-2 (hardly a decent codec). The truth of the matter is that old FM sounds better, I actually did some tests today. Digital Radio in the UK sounds worse then FM....

Tuesday, 25 January 2005 · 2 min · Paul Smith

Huygens touches down!

The Huygens space probe has landed safely on Titan, one of Saturn's satellites, pictured below in the bottom-left corner. ESA's Huygens space probe had been carried by the Cassini probe for seven years on it's journey to Saturn. The probe was designed to measure the moon's weather and chemistry, it appears to of landed on a solid surface and not plunged into an ocean of hydro-carbons as many people expected. Nobody seems to of mentioned this but it's the furthest from Earth we've ever landed a probe....

Friday, 14 January 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith

More iPod woes

My mate Chapstick had a bit of a run in with an iPod Mini lately, he did a pretty decent entry in his blog about it. I certainly enjoyed reading it. Two points I've got to make, I'll skip the obvious ones about iTunes trying to take over your computer, installing god knows what and having it all running in the background - I went into more detail about them in my why the iPod sucks entry from a few months back....

Friday, 14 January 2005 · 5 min · Paul Smith

Enough Longhorn SKUs for you?

Longhorn Starter Edition Analogous to Windows XP Starter Edition. Longhorn Home Edition Analogous to Windows XP Home Edition. Longhorn Premium/Media Center Edition A premium superset of Home Edition that includes the Media Center functionality. Similar to XP Media Center Edition. Longhorn Professional Edition Analogous to Windows XP Professional Edition. Longhorn Small Business Edition A new product edition aimed at the small business market. Currently very similar to Professional Edition. Longhorn Mobility/Tablet PC Edition...

Thursday, 13 January 2005 · 1 min · Paul Smith