Techkeyla » IT

Sky Player – Access is NOT so easy

David — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:22:27 +0000

Not so easy

For some reason best know to itself my Sky+ HD box decided to record only the second half of Stargate Universe this week.

No problem I thought, I’ll watch it on the much flaunted updated Sky Player that integrates with Windows 7 which was launched on the 19th November. Installation and registration onto my ASRock Nettop went fine and all initially appeared OK…

Sky's Sales Pitch

I log into the system and only see last weeks episode of Stargate Universe which is a real shame as nobody seems to have added this weeks episode yet (other series I have check before have been OK) . Now I’ll have to wait until they update it before I can watch the whole episode. Poot!

Whilst installing Sky Player it I did notice a few other oddities…

Some of the Episode details do not match up to the footage they are linked to, e.g. the present weeks episode of Modern Family actually has the title and synopsys of NEXT weeks episode. I saw the blurb and thought nice! I haven’t seen that one yet only to find it was this weeks which I had already seen! how disappointing :-/

When Installing Sky Player I noticed it said about the capabilities for integration into Windows 7′s Media Centre – there’s even a video of it. However the only info it says on how to actually access it is “Start Media Centre and select Sky Player”. But what if there is no SKY item listed as is the case with mine? it’s really not very helpful.

moving goalposts

I tried to check out the Forums (basically “you sod off and support yourself” so we can save money on any actual decent Support model) and that was as buggy as hell too. The Posts are erratically displayed all over the place with many parts repeated and the Search box allows you to enter only grayed out text and when you click ‘Search’ it does nothing.

Actually – in the last few mins of writing this post the’re forums have been taken down. The Link to it has been replaced with a “Register for free” button!

Come on guys! get your act together!

Down USB Memory Lane

David — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:59:02 +0000

I was reinstalling my sisters PC the other day and I elected to backup her data onto a USB storage pen. We opted for an 8Gb stick in PC world, and I think we paid about £12. I noticed, when the device was plugged in, that the available data size was not the full 8Gb. Obviously, this is because in the data storage industry a Kilobyte is measured as 1000bytes, not 1024, as has been the practice ever since I bought my first HDD (which was a whopping 40Mb drive!)

But, when you think about it isn’t this a little short sighted considering the issue this generates as we begin to use larger and larger data sizes. For example, when this was applied to Kb and Mb the difference was far less in evidence, as we begin to use Terabytes, Petabytes and eventually Exabytes this disparity between the advertised size and the usable size also manifests itself exponentially. The end result is that my shiny new 8Gb USB memory stick has a usable capacity of only 7.59Gb :-\

Extending this example to an 8Exabyte storage device (which had a perfect 8,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of space) the usable area would only in fact be 6.94Xb ! I think people will start to think hang on I paid for 8 and i’m now only getting only 6.9 ???

(If you want the full excel sheet including the hidden Giga, Mega and Kilo columns please just drop me a mail)

I wonder when the Industry will adopt the true 1024 factored scaling as standard?…

Recession Blow: TCS cuts salary

Sujoy — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:50:53 +0000

The first big move in the wave of the predicted recession of 2008 in IT has come across as a huge blow to the entire IT community. One of India’s largest software exporter, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) has implemented a plan, according to which, all the salaries of the employees would be reduced by Rs.2000 (50 USD) a month, for the next 3 months.(figures- citation required, some sources even indicate it’s Rs.10,000 or 250 USD). This is what the authorities claim to be a step taken to meet the shortcomings in the project revenues resulted from the appreciation of the Rupee vs. Dollar. Although, IT communities across the country are condemning the business tactic through web campaigns and blogs, there is no legal way to combat it, as the move is perfectly legal. This comes as a big surprise, and could be an indication of the tough times ahead for the IT Industry as outsourcing will falter, as speculated by big industry gurus.

The message is loud and clear though. The IT bubble isn’t growing anymore. What is more surprising is that this news has come at a time of the year end review when most of us (IT professionals) expect their yearly appraisals. It also is a very depressing news for the new joinees and also the ones who have their dates scheduled to join TCS. 2008 hasn’t really started on a good note for IT ,especially in India. Earlier, IBM was in the news for laying off 100,000 employees (out of its approximately 350,000) worldwide. As I sit down to hit the Publish button on this post, there are many people of my fraternity, who are busy expressing their anguish in the comments sections on blogs reporting the news. Is the IT bubble soon going to go ‘boom’?