So which is the best blu-ray player?
Posted by: theDoc in HDTV, tags: Blu-Ray, player, PS3Now that the format war is over and we can all stop holding back, its time to consider which blu-ray player to buy. Here are the main contenders; (more…)
Archive for February, 2008
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02
2008
So which is the best blu-ray player?Posted by: theDoc in HDTV, tags: Blu-Ray, player, PS3Now that the format war is over and we can all stop holding back, its time to consider which blu-ray player to buy. Here are the main contenders; (more…)
23
02
2008
XP - When cdrom’s disappearPosted by: Roamer in Computing, tags: cdrom, drivers, fix, missing, regedit, registry key, windows, XP
A friends HP desktop machine had mysteriously lost it’s cdrom and cd burner, they were there, listed in device manager, but marked as having problems - so I did the first thing we all try, uninstall them, reboot and let XP do it’s magic and bring them back again - but this time no joy… so I did a bit of searching (more…)
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02
2008
Toshiba to cease production of HD-DVDPosted by: theDoc in HDTV, tags: Blu-Ray, format war, HD-DVD, Sony, ToshibaReuters has picked up a story from Japanese broadcaster NHK that Toshiba is planning to stop production of HD-DVD compatible hardware, allowing the competing Blu-Ray format a clear run. The news follows a series of announcements over recent days that major online and high street retailers will no longer support the HD-DVD format, the most well-known of these being Wal-Mart in the US. Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars from its failure in the format war against Sony’s rival Blu-Ray format, which has often been compared to the Betamax-VHS battle of the 1980s in which Sony lost out. The Blu-Ray format will now be free to face up to its real competition; the continuing success of DVD and the growing popularity of downloads from the internet and on-demand TV.
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02
2008
The online roulette systemPosted by: Eekins in Mad Money Schemes, tags: betting, black, Casino, gambling, money, red, roulette, scheme, systemI was leaving a comment on the previous Roulette system and it started to look a little bit long so I decided to do a new post. I’m interested to see if anyone else gives this a try. I tried it out on Casino Splendido (not with real money of course (yet?) - eekins (itching to play for real)
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02
2008
Make Money in Online Casinos? - You decidePosted by: Roamer in Mad Money Schemes, tags: betting, black, Casino, chance, gambling system, Gaming, money, red, roulette, scheme, statistics, strategy, winningHi all, now this is an odd one for me to be writing about but bare with me and see if what I could say sounds feasible or not. A friend sent me a link to a site yesterday which seemed too good to be true, it described a “system” for roulette, it described it very badly indeed but I could make sense of it. It quite simpled works (it seems) by betting purely on one colour (obviously either black or red), starting with a £1 bet, if you win, switch colour and start with a £1 bet again, if you lose, double the bet on the same colour, and keep on doubling the bet every time you lose on that colour, eventually you will win, and you will not only cover the loses so far on that colour, but you will be in profit. Once you win, switch colour and start again from your £1 bet.
The theory behind this “system” is a very simple one, if you lose you double your bet - this means that your next bet is covering your previous loss thus you are not actually losing anything by it, eventually you will win, covering your previous losses and making a small profit. Now the switching of colour when you win - to me this seems a bit crazy, remember that roulette is a game of chance, statistically on every bet (When you are playing only black / red) you have a 1 in 2 chance of winning, so whether you constantly cover a colour until you win, then switch or you change every time shouldn’t make any difference to the payout of this “system”. The badly written site did give a few caveat’s to it’s use though, which I think are just common sense really, the biggest one is to not go too big on any one session, win upto £100 or £150 max, otherwise you’ll be flagged up to the online casinos and most probably be banned - maybe from all of them depending on if they have a ban mandate between them all or not - I don’t know. Also don’t play one online casino day in day out, they do (apparently) take notice of playing habits and they may well pick you out of the crowd for following a ruleset such as this. One other thing is to not using this sort of betting strategy in a physical casino - I’m guessing because it’s well know and they would possibly eject you from the premises - not a good ending to a night out - anyway, I’ve never even seen inside a casino, so I don’t know if you’d care or not lol Now I’m not a betting man myself, but peoples “systems” fascinate me, mostly because alot of the time people are convinced that because of a certain strategy (Such as the switching from black to red in this one) that they increase their odds of winning, where as statistically it doesn’t alter the outcome at all because they always have nearly a 1 in 2 chance (Ok, I know that there is also zero (green) and in american roulette we have double zero (also green) which means that you have something like 47% chance of it landing on black or red, but the process does seem to work - but like I say I”m not a betting man, I simply tried it on a free play site, no money of mine was going to be risked on gambling lol. Using this “system” you increase your money by your initial bet amount once you win on the colour you are sticking on, so there are two ways to increase the amount you win on any one colour betting sequence, eith you can increase your inital bet and keep on doubling, or you could (if you are brave or have lots of money) triple or quadruple your bets each time - the only issue is that you could find yourself out of money on a run before you have a win on that colour. So there it is, a system found, a modification for the high rollers out there, and some words of warning so that you hopefully don’t get banned lol. Anyway, like I said, statistically I like the way this plays out, although I’m sure one of the other editors will pick me up on not including loads of mathematics, but that’s ok, he’s the math’s genius - not me - eh theDoc?
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02
2008
Bye Bye Virgin Media ADSL - and good riddance!Posted by: Roamer in ADSL, Computing, tags: ADSL, bandwidth, latency, reseller, usage, virgin media, voipRight, I’m probably right now writing one of my last blog entries via my absolutely terrible Virgin Media ADSL connection, and may I say that I will hopefully never look back After balling about them back in October about their worse than useless latency and bandwidth, I’ve done lots of research into other providers. PlusNet were one of the front runners, but one of my friends has since been having problems with latency of VOIP across their network resulting in >1 second delays etc, so I had to put them to one side. I searched alot, and read huge amounts of peoples comments, reviews, babblings etc and after cutting the wheat from the chaff I think I’ve stumbled upon the solution which will work best for me. The solution is that I have found a wholesale internet provider, one who gives good support, who keep there outbound link bandwidth in line with their customer base so that you don’t find yourself being severely bottle-necked during the so-called “Busy” evening periods, and also doesn’t require a long contract term - in fact, nothing more than a 30 day notice, no hidden charges, no migration fees - pretty much the ideal provider - apart from one thing, you can’t, as a normal customer, go up to them and open an account, migrate your service and be happy, thats because they are a wholesale internet provider, meaning that they only deal with companies, companies who’s aim is to sell their service onto end consumers like you or I….. So, after discussions with people behind the scenes here @Roamer.com I decided that my company would endeavour to register as a partner with the wholesale internet provider, and so we have, now we are waiting until 23:43 on the 12th of Feb to see that our service does indeed go live as stated, and that the service is all it’s cracked up to be. Once we have made sure that we are indeed happy, and that there are no pitfalls I haven’t yet seen, I will then be releasing an ADSL service to the general public, one which provides very fair packages and fair prices, and gives a quality service to all customers - but more about that as it happens in the future If you would possibly be interested in a new reliable service - especially you Virgin Media ADSL customers out there, please join the site and leave a comment, I’ll then be able to update you when the service goes live for all. I’ll post a follow up to this article as soon as I’ve been able to connect with my new adsl details, here’s hoping -Roamer. |