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Comment: Obsolete like iPod docks (Score 1) 445

by james_marsh (#42130563) Attached to: The Coming Wave of In-Dash Auto System Obsolescence

I bought a VW Golf which had a factory fitted iPod dock in the arm rest. The salesperson couldn't understand why I wasn't impressed. It's been buggy and utterly useless - not being physically compatible with some models, not charging with others and the sound quality was appalling. Now Apple have changed the dock connector and there is definitely not enough room for any sort of adapter.

I fitted a 3rd party aux-in/SD card/USB adapter myself and I'm free to use whatever device I choose and it sounds massively better with same factory speakers/head unit. Why couldn't they have done that to begin with?

Comment: Re: Tp-link Wr1043nd (Score 1) 334

by james_marsh (#38230828) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Flash-Friendly Router To Replace Aging WRT54GS?

These are excellent,widely available and very cheap devices. Mine was Â£33.

I have it running OpenWrt and as well as managing the network it gets reasonable speeds as a backup with a 6TB lvm volume. "Reasonable" disk write speed in this context is in comparison to other devices like slugs etc. I get just over 10MB/s sustained write via vsftp (proved to be quite a bit faster than samba, nfs and sftp).

Comment: Poor LaTeX skills often mean poor at C++ (Score 1) 670

by james_marsh (#36451306) Attached to: C++ the Clear Winner In Google's Language Performance Tests

Given the number of Googlers involved with producing this article, I'm more surprised by them not using TeX quotation marks correctly than the result of the competition. (Not to mention using crappy tables with way too many ruled lines which do nothing to aid understanding of the organisation of the tables.)

Experience frequently shows that people that overlook such details writing an article will often by nature be weak C++ team programmers. More than with most other languages, good C++ coding demands someone who is intrinsically observant, obsessively perfectionist and aware of often obscure side effects and implications of everything they write. This is obviously important on the most basic level so that they don't make mistakes, but even more important that they understand how other people could misinterpret complex code and algorithms and potential consequences.

It is this last level of empathy that is the sign of great C++ programmers vs. the good or clever. "Clever" solitary programmers (such as some of those drawn to perl) are in fact the worst to have in C++ team programming scenarios where their desire to demonstrate their own ability often ends up with some over-templated prematurely optimised nightmare which is then left as a trap for someone seeking to modify it later on.

Comment: Re:WHS + MEDIA CENTER + XBOX 360 = Done (Score 1) 536

by james_marsh (#30307778) Attached to: Best PC DVR Software, For Any Platform?

WHS + MEDIA CENTER + XBOX 360 + added ambience of the fans screaming away while watching a movie = Fail

I was full intending to use my (admittedly older generation) XBOX 360 for video playback but the hassle of needing to have a media server transcode video into something the 360 is happy with (and the resulting loss of seeking) and the noise from the fans soon killed that idea.

For recording UK DVB TV I have a Topfield 5800 - superb bit of kit with two tuners and a USB port allowing you to copy off the raw DVB MPEG2 video files.

I now use a Popcorn Hour for playback, and while the UI isn't the prettiest ever, its played every video format I've ever tried flawlessly with no interlacing artefacts and no skipping.

Comment: Censorship can be bought by the rich and guilty (Score 1) 2

by james_marsh (#29726277) Attached to: The Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament
It seems in the UK if you are wealthy enough, not only can you bankrupt people with the libel laws, but you can create legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involving proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The result is that the Guardian can only report that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations. Conveniently parliamentary orders are published online and the clue to the solicitors involved is enough to find the following series of questions from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the Court of Appeal judgment in May 2009 in the case of Michael Napier and Irwin Mitchell v Pressdram Limited in respect of press freedom to report proceedings in court.




The proceedings relate to this shocking case


Indie Game Dev On the Positive Side To DRM 440

Posted by Soulskill
from the it's-an-excellent-whipping-boy dept.
spidweb writes "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'"
