threegee

Because the hardware is much better - four times better! And because I've now got a significant collection of initially promising media boxes where the hardware doesn't quite make it. Amazon will kill it for me if the software is too proprietary; that remains to be seen.

Good on you! Screw Murdoch, and ickle Bernie too!

More on the BBC colouring the news to suit their lefty-liberal agenda: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2014/05/farzana-iqbal-was-murdered-by-muslims-applying-sharia-why-does-the-bbc-not-report-these-facts/ We pay for this service, we shouldn't tolerate this overt censorship! It's all part of the disdain the London-based elites hold the rest of the UK in. I no longer think the BBC capable of reform; the licence fee should be abolished by any government worthy of a single provincial vote. Wise up people, we are being taken for fools - not just by the London-based politicos either!

What has Sky got that you can't watch elsewhere and, as a whole, pay a lot less for? Should I have said that subscription broadcasting is dead? Sky is predicated on making you pay for 99.9% content you will never watch, at times that are rarely convenient.

Nope! Spelling checker mis-substitution whilst balancing a coup of coffee in one hand and a lappy on knees, whilst unstably seated. Yet another unforeseen consequence of excessive automation! incident - well spotted! Thinks: that could add to the story-line, but if I point that out he'll want a royalty cut!

Having given it a second look-over it's actually an article about a guy losing his job as a consequence of reporting whatever. That's their get out clause for not reporting properly on whatever (=MH370). I think that there's a term for articles which get your attention by feeding on interest on one thing, but in fact are about something completely different - a sort of parasitic journalism. If there isn't then there certainly should be!

It sort of looks like they haven't bothered to acquire a copy themselves! Though they seem to dangle the prospect that they might if there is enough interest. I like the hot link on Northumberland and not Stakeford. Just in case Journal readers don't know where Northumberland is? Increasing automation in news gathering is producing a lot of crud these days. I have an idea for a book where web-scraping, and repeated computer re-interpretation of it by AI engines, produces a major and unstoppable international indecent with crazy consequences. There you are authors; the idea is for free, but you'll owe me a from-an-idea-by credit - we'll talk about the film rights later.

Yes, but lazy journalism. Nothing done to join the dots in order to add further information. Nothing done to provide others with the information to do that for themselves. They've filtered out the essential facts! I've never rated the Indy, and this does nothing to change my mind.

A2Zee is on a name-and-shame list of 25 employers just issued. Under new legislation employers could be liable for up to a £20,000 fine per employee. That's a potential £280,000 - gasp - if it were to fall under the new rules! A2Zee also falls into the top twelve under-payers on the government's list, by exceeding the four-figure mark. However they fail to name a football club and other high-profile employers underpaying quite substantial amounts, explaining "we would only name businesses in exceptional circumstances". Quite how this squares with naming some small firms for very modest underpayments is yet to be explained. The company - which appears to be being operated from a private terraced house - has very little presence on the internet, until now! http://www.192.com/atoz/business/cramlington-ne23/sc/a2zee-construction-ltd/f77b72077258987d59c2e8ac003704e2064d81f7/comp/ It was incorporated on the 18th July 2012 as a joinery installation business, and its accounts appear to be current. Unfortunately bright Beeb journos seem to have renamed it A2ZEE Constriction - a Freudian slip, or just more social engineering? Despite the American-sounding name there appears to be no connection with a US outfit using the same moniker.

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=chromecast The new Amazon box looks a lot lot better - when it has UK availability. Also search on Roku. Sky is toast!

It could have been predicted. Social misfit Peter Hain - who quit his own country to tell us how to run ours, and who has become very wealthy telling Labour voters what they wanted to hear - is standing down to spend more time with his mysteriously-gotten millions! I'd rather hoped that when he got what he professed to want in his own country he'd be keen to return there. Sadly, that wasn't to be the case; there were far easier pickings here. It's ever the case with socialists - when they get what they say they want, they decide they would rather have what someone else has. There's the usual two-faced gushing about seeing eye-to-eye with Miliband, but he can see that the end is nigh, and that the gravy train is coming in to the station. Maybe he was looking for the usual transfer to the Euro gravy train? Maybe recent events have stalled those plans? We'd have been a better (and ever-so-slightly richer) country without your "efforts" Peter, and there's still time to return to South Africa! Loads of people there who now really need your "help". Unfortunately they can't pay you as handsomely as the "broken, socially-unjust, UK" can! https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090125115000AArCteL

Another good install on a Asus EEE PC901 but not the GO (3G WWLAN version) this time. Worthy of mention because this variant has built-in Bluetooth, and that works flawlessly too. Writing this using Point Linux on a PC901 using a Bluetooth mouse. This PC901 has two SSDs, so I squeezed the entire OS onto the 4GB flash drive leaving the entire 8GB SSD for /home. The first PC901 also worked with the first Bluetooth USB dongle I tried. I've no idea as to what Bluetooth chip it employed. The minor mistake I made on the first install was to format as ext4. In fact on small SSD(s) ext2 gives more working space. BTW despite the PCI-E connector, and form factor, these SSDs are not mSATA. This is a pity as really decent sized mSATA SSDs are really cheap nowadays. The pin-out is different, and there's only one or two manufacturers of Asus EEE compatible drives. They pre-date the mSATA standard. Confusingly they are called "Mini PCI-e SATA". http://www.kingspec.com/product_xx150.html#

So... you are a lefty BBC producer; you hate your country, its past, and everything it stands for. You are on a crusade for social change, and to "mould minds" - particularly young ones. What would you do? The country's history is a good target. The military? Oh, throw in the royals for good measure. Let's mock them! Let's commission a "comedian" who has a record of this. One who has no record of writing anything even mildly comedic for radio, but has a record of causing insult to the Queen. We'll dress this sick "comedy" up as being "experimental" and innovative. But, here's the master-stroke: we'll wait for an occasion when it will have maximum impact. We'll wait for a time when all the people we so hate have their minds on the very sacrifice and selfless effort we are about to mock. D-Day remembrance - yes that's it! Miliband senior would be proud! An altogether new low for 21st Century BBC! Will heads roll? Probably not; with a dumb apathetic public they get away with it all the time these days. Social engineering at its most finessed. ( It's still on iPlayer if you are interested enough. I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by providing a link. )

So what's going on in Newark? From a serious challenger, nine out of ten LD voters desert the party and it loses its deposit! Those votes should have gone to Labour, but Labour is seriously down in the polls too. Seriously down from one of its worst results ever, at a time when it should have been packing on votes! Nine thousand voters certainly haven't deserted the LD's to go to UKIP. The vast majority of those LDs voted for Cameron's left-of-center, split-on-Europe, Tory party! UKIP have taken both Tory and Labour votes, and are likely to keep them. UKIP have likely also brought people back into politics who have felt they've had no real representation in recent decades. The LD screw-up in removing Clegg has likely finished the party for good, and we are back with three party politics - only a different three parties! Miliband is poison, even to most Labour voters, and if he ever becomes PM by default it is going to be a very sad fixed five year term for this country. A completely wasted five years until even brainless Labour supporters, who don't realise who and what they are electing, have had enough of him. There are still a lot of imponderables, but we certainly live in interesting times. A change of leadership could completely transform any of the old parties, and even save the LDs from oblivion. That none of them can do this shows what a disparate rabble each of them really is! Here's the real reason for the surge in devolution: nowadays people feel better able to do things for themselves.

...and how would someone get involved and help?

European Clegg Boll*x is good for a starter. So the Reichsbank has just cut Euro interest rates to a staggeringly low 0.15% to "avoid deflation". The Euro is in trouble - real trouble - everyone (wow, even the LDs!) have known this for a long while. Our financially astute friends up North worked this out for themselves long ago too. Sterling is just as much theirs as it is ours, we are told. Well, not so fast, but we're glad you eventually noticed. The Euro is predicated on political pipe-dreams of tired, old, out-of-touch, men and is destined to fail - but so, my dear LD friends, is The European Project. Only the Germans have the tenacity (and stupidity) to cling on to a really dumb idea until inevitability is right outside their bunker door. Meanwhile the UK economy is on the rise after Gordo's uberbinge, and the BoE (Bank of Enlightenment) is worried about inflation again. What could further emphasise that the UK is a viable economic unit on the World stage, and simply shouldn't be throwing huge sums of our precious Sterling at a the long dead idea of a European super-state? Yup, it's the seventieth anniversary of 'D' day, and our UKIP troopers are making the first tentative landings on enemy shores. Our French allies are to be regarded with suspicion as they're a funny lot, and a lot of them still support German domination. Elsewhere large swathes of the Continent are quietly hoping we will liberate them. Cue-in for the Abba song: Waterloo, of course! ...The history book on the shelf Is always repeating itself ...

How about ringing Sky up and telling them you want to cancel the contract? You don't? Well that's not really important; the fact that you are ringing at all could be all it takes to collect a massive saving! 82% of the people who've tried haggling with Sky report real savings. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/10875750/Martin-Lewis-My-10-tips-for-haggling-with-call-centres.html Do a bit of homework before you ring not just Sky but other major suppliers, and don't forget to report your results back here for others to benefit. Minimising the excess profits that flow out of our Town indirectly benefits everyone in it, and when that money goes to faceless foreign corporations it doesn't even benefit our Country. . Provider - Success rateAA (407 responses) - 90pcTalkTalk (198 responses) - 82pcSky (915 responses) - 82pcRAC (100 responses) - 78pcAdmiral (163 responses) - 78pcAviva (123 responses) - 74pcVirgin Mobile (113 responses) - 73pcVirgin Media (395 responses) - 73pcDirect Line (127 responses) - 70pcEE (156 responses) - 67pc

Point Linux (32 bit) on an old netbook ...works pretty well on an Asus EEE PC901 GO (2GB RAM upgrade). A no hassle install from a live USB stick, with all the hardware recognised and little or no customisation required. Only 4GB of the SSD used for a complete install, so should work on the most basic of machines. Haven't tried the 901 GO's built-in 3G WWLAN card yet, it's not on high on my to-do list. VLC player was struggling a lot playing a sample .mp4, but that's a function of the weak N270 CPU, and poor graphics. I have now installed the IBM Eclipse IDE, and that is quite usable. DropBox installed in minutes too - quite a bonus when you have so little on-board storage. Make sure you limit the number of your DropBox folders marked to synchronise to just a few essential and small ones, or you'll quickly exhaust available flash, and the initial synch will take an age. The real difficulty is cleanly removing the "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" sticker. So... recommended for an old Atom N270 netbook too. You can put Granny on the Internet with Firefox, and give her e-mail with Tunderbird - all in no time at all. The bundled Firefox actually has Flash pre-installed, so YouTube works out of the box. This is not too bad, even at full screen - better than I'd thought possible with such weak hardware.

Someone just sent me this link without any comment, and it's telling: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-30681834.html I won't tell you what I make of it (well, not just yet ) as I'm more than interested to hear what other people think.

On which matters this link makes an interesting read: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=88339 On the Akademik Shokalskiy (stuck ship) thing.. at the time I wondered why all these obviously quite wealthy - but from the pictures clearly rather silly - people, had gone for a jolly in the Antarctic. Well goodness me, it turned out the Beeb was only protecting us from the facts which our tiny, non-liberal, non-PC brains, couldn't possibly absorb. (Read down on the above link). When hard facts get suppressed because they don't fit in to someone's model of how the World should be, then science goes out of the window, and dictatorship is banging on the front door. I've recently concluded that it's a total waste of time reading any of the comments on bbc.co.uk web items, because - apart from the complaints about censorship - what's there is carefully cherry-picked to represent the Beeb's view of the World. I've seen something somewhere about how the public participation audiences are filtered - to avoid anything un-broadcastable you understand. It's all about giving an illusion of free and open discussion, whilst keeping things within carefully pre-selected limits. Not too different to broadcasting in China I feel.

The New York Times reporting possible recorded acoustics off the southern tip of India - a long long way from the previous search zone. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-indian-ocean-recorded-noise-offers-clues-to-missing-plane.html?_r=0 UPDATE: This news story could add weight to the above: http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/I-thought-saw-MH370-fire-says-Phuket/29654#ad-image-2

Here at last: http://www.sammobile.com/2014/06/02/samsung-finally-launches-its-first-tizen-phone-the-samsung-z/ Looks a nice phone, and if it doesn't virtually force the use of Java, and is a true Linux phone, it gets my vote. 2GB of RAM is nice, and has to be about the very minimum for a smartphone these days. If they produce a dual SIM version I will go out of my way to locate one, else it will have to be a half-price flog-off at the local store to persuade me. M$ is going to get its nose pushed out yet again! Number four is nowhere in the mobile space - ask Blackberry! The new LG G3 has come too late for me. If the G2 had had that removable battery and microSD I'd be an LG user now, but Sammy got there (and beyond) last year with the Note 3.

Point Linux (64 bit) as a VirtualBox VM Very easy to create a Point Linux VirtualBox 64 bit VM under W7. Again, everything just works. Mouse integration etc is already turned on. Installed the 64 bit Debian version of DropBox in a couple of minutes no hassle. Removed the pre-installed Thunderbird to save a bit of space, but just at the moment a 10GB virtual drive is more than enough. I turned two cores on for the virtual machine, and bumped the default 512MB RAM to 800MB to give things a bit more oomph, but it was quite usable with the default single core. VirtualBox doesn't specifically list Point Linux so I chose the Debian 64 bit preset. Recommended if you want to concurrently run a full Linux distro on a W7 machine! If you have an SSD - cheap as chips these days - it's magic!

Yet Another Linux Distribution! This one is good, not at all quirky, and just works! http://pointlinux.org/index.html Based on Debian, just like Ubuntu, but it's much less cluttered. Actually, Ubuntu really annoys me on several scores! So far I was able to download the Point Linux 32 bit .iso (for those who don't know that is the CD data image file) and flash it to a cheapo USB stick using Windows 7 using https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer. It booted immediately from the stick on a Windows 7 machine as a "live CD" (i.e. without doing an install), and picked up ALL the hardware, including Bluetooth, WiFi, and HDMI video, with zero problems. I'm aiming to install it from the same stick on a number of old Windows XP machines, so will let you know how I get on. It could be just what many people need to revitalise an XP laptop that's currently gathering dust. I'm also trying out the 64 bit version running under VirtualBox on an i5 lappy. Will report back on that too. I'd previously tried out http://www.geteasypeasy.com/ on an old XP netbook. It looked very promising, but sadly the author seems to have lost all interest a while back. So... Easy Peasy Linux is no longer maintained, and therefore can't be recommended.

I will drink to that! Happy Birthday Adam.