CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?
Shut it!

Tuesday, June 25

Geek

Conspiracy Theories From A Parallel Earth

The Build-A-Bear Group manipulates global economic policy for its own twisted, fuzzy ends.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:16 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

Sunday, June 23

Geek

In The Shade


This Hour's Top Item Count:
Nightshade
1.Pixy Misa 628
2.Sasami 539
3.Lelouch 500
4.andi 480
5.Potemayo 431

Only three of those are me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:18 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

Friday, June 21

Geek

Insanity

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 is now available in Australia.  This is one of the phones I've been looking to as a mini-tablet; it has a 6.3" 1280x720 screen, so the screen is nearly as big as on the Nexus 7, but the device overall is much slimmer and lighter.

There are two models; the only difference is that one has 8GB of onboard flash and the other has 16GB.

Prices are $669 and $679 respectively.

Why do they even bother?  The cost of handling two separate SKUs across multiple markets has to be more than the cost of just giving everyone 16GB in the first place.

I'm still thinking it over.  If they had a 128GB model at, say, $799, I'd have jumped already.*

* I have a 160GB iPod classic.  There is nothing, literally nothing, on the market that can replace it.  Flash memory prices are now low enough, and capacities high enough, that it would be cheap and easy to build such a device.  But no-one has bothered.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.

Thursday, June 20

Geek

Xbox Phone Home

Or more accurately, Xbox One no phone home.

After being sandbagged by Sony at E3 last week, Microsoft has wised up and removed the requirement that the Xbox One connect to Microsoft to re-authenticate itself every 24 hours.  They've also removed the restriction on selling or lending disc-based games.

Now if they just allow you to run it without the Kinect and cut the price by $100, they'll have a slower PS4 with less available memory...

They could also stop trying to bullshit everyone about the cloud, but there I'm not sure that they actually realise what they're doing; I suspect they may believe their own nonsense.

Update: Penny Arcade sums it up.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.

Tuesday, June 11

Geek

Apple's Concept Of Innovation


  1. If it's pretty but lacks functionality, make it ugly but functional.
  2. If it's dull but functional, make it pretty but useless.
  3. No you don't get a say in the matter. You will want what you have been told to want.
iOS 7 is just nasty. Must remember to update my iPad to iOS 6 at some point before 7 comes out.

The new Mac Pro Mini is interesting; the world's first high-end workstation that requires a desktop dock. (Available 5¼" drive bays: Zero. Available 3½" drive bays: Zero. Available 2½" drive bays: Zero. Available PCIe slots: Zero.) Up to 12 cores and 64GB RAM, which is exactly the same as the previous model. On the other hand, it's small and looks like an ashtray.

There's a lot of fuss going on about the Mac Pro Mini.  If Apple had released it as a new product alongside a lightly updated (socket 2011) full-size Mac Pro, everyone would be ecstatic.  But no.

Update: A choice quote from Ars Technica:
Ask any Mac Pro users where "small size” sits on their list of workstation needs and they will tell you it's down at the bottom, squarely between "should make my bed in the morning” and "covered in fur.”

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:01 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 208 words, total size 2 kb.

Geek

Diced!

And with a little flup on my doorstep, another Kickstarter project delivers the goods.  This time, dice.  In each of six colours (red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white): d4, d6, d7, d8, d10, d12, d14, d16, d18, d20, d22, d24, and d30.

Take that, Plato!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:24 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 47 words, total size 1 kb.

Thursday, June 06

Geek

Pretty As Another Picture

The first pictures I saw of the Asus PadNote Fone made it look like an ugly piece of do-not-want, whatever the specs.

Found a better picture.

/images/AsusNotePadFone.jpg

Want now.

6" 1080p IPS screen, stylus, Android 4.2, 3G, but with an Atom processor rather than Arm.  Which does not seem like a sensible choice, at least not until the next-gen Baytrail / Merrifield Atoms come out.  But it's the only device even announced so far that has a 1080p+ screen in the gap between 5 and 9 inches.  Possibly only 16GB of built-in storage, which is barely adequate, but supports up to 64GB of microSD.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 107 words, total size 1 kb.

Wednesday, June 05

Geek

Missed Opportunities

Where's the 11.6" Haswell Windows 8 notebook with the detachable 2560x1600 screen which turns into an Android tablet with a Wacom digitiser and a stylus and WiDi for using it as a detached touchscreen and a Thunderbolt dock for desktop use?

Given what has been shown at Computex this year, it's possible that there's a device with those exact specs and I just missed it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:26 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 67 words, total size 1 kb.

Geek

Computexed

More highlights:
  • While everyone's waiting for someone to fix the limitations of the Nexus 7 (slow CPU, limited memory and storage, low-res screen - by this year's standards, anyway), Toshiba stepped in and launched their Excite Pure, which is basically the Nexus 7 internals with a 10" screen and costing $50 more; the Excite Pro, which is just the Excite Write without the cool stuff; and the Excite Write, which fixes the limitations of the Nexus 10, upgrading from a dual-core A15 CPU to quad, adding a microSD slot, and building in a Wacom digitiser and stylus while keeping the superb 2560x1600 display.

    So the question is just which you need more: A keyboard (Asus Transformer Pad Infinity), or a stylus (Toshiba Excite Write); the specs are otherwise equivalent (or identical).

  • Fujitsu announced the UH90, a 14" notebook with a 3200x1800 display.  MSI announced their GT60 3K gaming laptop, with a 15.5" 2880x1620 screen - and a GeForce 780M with 4GB of RAM to move those pixels around.  Dell's XPS 11 convertible has a more mundane 2560x1440 11" screen.

    Ultra-high-resolution displays are definitely in vogue this year; we can only hope that this continues - and that prices keep going down as production ramps up.

  • Intel announced Thunderbolt 2 (again), which provides one 20Gbps channel instead of Thunderbolt 1's two 10Gbps channels.  So yes, throughput is exactly the same as before.  No, that's not much of a highlight.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 239 words, total size 2 kb.

Tuesday, June 04

Geek

Glurk

That 4K Asus monitor?

That's not just the resolution; it's also the price tag: $3799.

For which price I can get four 27" 2560x1440 monitors, a couple of Aten DisplayPort switchboxes to hook them up to all my computers, and some of PowerColor's quad-DisplayPort 7850 video cards to hook all my computers to all the switchboxes.

Or to put it another way, it costs as much as 20 perfectly serviceable 21.5" 1080p IPS monitors from Acer.

So...  Maybe next year.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.

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