John Anderson

Member since: Nov 1st, 2005

John Anderson's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
Engadget	2 Comments
Download Squad	5 Comments

Recent Comments:

Microsoft to kill Hotmail Outlook Express support (Download Squad)

Apr 18th 2008 6:40PM I can't find the "none" button.

I leave the stuff where it belongs, on someone else's hard drives.

PixRuler makes measuring easy (Download Squad)

Sep 3rd 2006 5:08PM Cool Ruler. IT also can switch between measuring pixels, inches, millimeters...

Clarification: HD has been stripped from all versions of Vista (Download Squad)

Sep 1st 2006 10:38PM Later: the accusation has been made that both DVD-HD formats emplace so much copy-protection and other junk that the resultant image not only does not live up to the hype but is actually worse than normal DVD. Keep an eye open.

Commercial skipping to cost $8 billion in TV ads this year? (Engadget)

May 8th 2006 9:06AM Phony issue. Hilton has a hotel in London, it cost them a lot of money to build, so I must stay there or be accused of theft?

And shotgun targeting, as Evo pointed out, means over 80% of adverts have no connection with my life --- and another 10% may but are nonetheless (I cannot afford a new Lamborghini even though I drive) irrelevant.

But no doubt the attempts to force us to view ads will continue, as they have since at least the Betamax case. The two I am particularly [UN]fond of are the secondary coded ads that show up in fast-forward mode, and the one that disables fast-forward if a segment (ie, advert) is so coded.

Intel VIIV says "no, thank you" to DRM (Engadget)

Mar 18th 2006 4:25PM Remember that this is out of Austalia. Boing-Boing (last week? well, recently) linked to a PDF of an Australian Parliament document that recommended a lot of law related to DRM and DMCA, to kill off their consumer restrictions. Comes close to putting DRM back to where it was supposed to be, keeping in-house stuff from casual hacking while allowing easy in-house usage --- not destroying fair use, time-shifting, backups, media-format changing (eg tape to CD to DVD etc).

The Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006 (Download Squad)

Mar 12th 2006 12:43PM Textbook Seller - "Apparently people are too lazy to change service providers to get the product they actually want."
Sheesh. If I want dial-up, I can choose from hundreds of suppliers. If I want a website hosted, ditto. But a high-speed ISP? Phone co. DSL, cable co. Cable (yes, that is what I use - without the TV, Radio, Phone etc. crap), and satellite (what, both of them? and my apt complex won't let me put an antenna outside, my apt faces NE while satellites are SW...). Past those two (!!!) choices, look at running your own T1 line or some such.