Posts by Mage
1824 posts • joined Friday 23rd November 2007 08:43 GMT
Page:
Greed
See how any of the Mobile operators would like White Space Operations on their licensed spectrum by someone else.
It's been hyped so much that the Bean Counters and PHBs at these companies believe in it. It causes interference as their own RF engineers know.
It's an American inspired myth. Clue in the name.
Re: More Google Irresponsible Stupidity.
It's 60km range and also totally unreliable as balloons drift quickly. All of the disadvantages of Balloons and LEO satellites with none of the advantages. A cheap gimmick on the wrong band. There are tethered balloon designs, but that has problems. So Astra has a LEO satellite project using a swarm. There is some scepticism about the SES-Astra project but it's more viable than this nonsense and won't interfere with anyone.
This is either designed by idiots for "cool" or by RF engineers goaded by bosses with big pointy sticks. It's a totally stupid irresponsible band to use on balloons for the General Public.
If a company is going to to something stupid like this they should use a suitable band.
Mines the one with ITU band plans and RF Planning in the pocket.
More Google Irresponsible Stupidity.
This doesn't even work. The higher the "mast" the more coverage, then the more users and slower the speed.
It's pointless Google PR to make them look like a Cool Tech company. They are an Advertising company.
Range is very high with such a high platform. (For more capacity on Mobile you use LOWER masts and less power). So what ever band it uses it dramatically reduces performance/capacity as the Balloon passes within range. It's irresponsible. As is Google's so called "White Space".
Such Balloons are technically a HAP (High Altitude Platform). The recommended bands are 200GHz and/or 400GHz I think as only that high a frequency is there enough capacity for such range/coverage. It's ridiculous to use ISM for such a platform.
However they will be short lived as the Helium will leak out.
Re: Little Johnny is playing XBOX One alone in his room....
Shades of the Last Starfighter :-)
Re: Ives? don't have any world players
Because of the different Venture capital model. Sheer size of market, better Venture Capital etc means a dozen or so US companies are very dominant. For every one of those there are thousands of failures.
Dominance of "Bean Counters" and the London "financial" trading has killed off many promising UK companies. Only Financial management, leveraged buyouts (= asset stripping) and Defence /Aerospace is valued in UK. Inmos could have beaten Intel but we threw it away. Clive Sinclair produced mostly rubbish, but more innovative than Ives, Even Amstrad / Alan Sugar couldn't believe how badly Timex produced gear for Sinclair when he bought them. When the Japanese came to set up TV plants in Wales etc they couldn't use UK parts. Quality too poor. Not a design issue but Bean Counters killing the companies.
I know loads of Designers, Engineers (SW & HW) that have done more good innovation and development in a few years than J.I. has in his whole career, he got a lucky break and gave Jobs what he was looking for.
How many Apple, Microsoft, Google etc are there anyway?
Re: HP
Also when they merged (= Took over) Compaq many of the best products of both companies killed in the "rationalisation". The worst handheld, Workstations & Servers rather than best kept. But Compaq bought DEC surely, not HP and really only for the service channels, so all the DEC HW & SW was doomed anyway?
A far cry from the days when they made world leading Test gear and Semiconductors.
Their Laser printers are now inferior to Brother. The Inkjets only exist to sell ink.
Ives?
A genius?
He admitted he ripped it all of Dieter Rams' Braun stuff. What exactly has he invented that someone else less famous and with poorer marketing didn't do first?
"a Channel 14 network could achieve three times the range and much higher speeds than open-access channels"
This is obviously nonsense. You might as well claim an FM Radio station on 103 MHz has three times the range and quality of one on 100MHz.
Re: I can't believe people consider this debatable.
Powers of Two are applicable to RAM and ROM as addressing and storage increments are binary.
Drive storage, communications Bit Rates, Frequencies etc are all correctly powers of 10.
I can't believe that after over 40 years some people are STILL trying to argue that the "short hand" & misleading method of counting in 1024 increments (because a 1K RAM was 10 address bits and thus really 1024) is correct for anything else when it was only ever a convenience for chips and address buses.
I don't need to use Mebi etc. If it's chip related I know 1024s apply. But MHz, GHz, M bps, M symbols/s, disk storage, Kilometres etc are all powers of TEN not powers of 2.
Anyway I look forward to a future new laptop with 2 of these mirrored.
Re: Bored with your nonsense now!
Fewer towers (masts) also means poorer capacity.
will have to take care of themselves
That's criminal irresponsibility in Spectrum Planning.
Mobile doesn't actually need the 800MHz, It won't be broadband and all it does is save a few rural masts (more masts = better data rates) reducing data speed compared with the alternative solutions.
This is fuelled by
Government greed on Licence fees
Tech companies
Desire of operators to cut costs rather than improve service capacity
It brings nothing to the consumer and impoverishes DTT, benefits Pay TV on Cable and Satellite.
Only DTT works anywhere. Satellite & Cable are inflexible and Cable is Pay TV only.
Not simple. Conclusions wrong
TDD can be LESS efficient. It just can work (more slowly) in less spectrum. Also FDD can be cheaper to implement.
Uplink needs lower symbol rate as client power is more limited than Base Station. Thus even at a 8:1 ratio of download vs upload (a reasonable factor) the uplink needs about the same spectrum.
This means if you use a single unpaired channel your receiver is potentially de-sensed by other nearby modems and the available download speed on average less than 1/2 the FDD paired spectrum. You need guard time between the half duplex Transmit and Receive, reducing efficiency.
TDD will always have higher latency too.
FDD is the more efficient cheaper solution. TDD is only of value to use up odd chunks of spectrum. WiMax had it as it was Intel's concept of outdoor WiFi, hence they stuck it in the LTE spec later to satisfy the small number of operators that would want it.
Re: Hot?
Solid in contrast to a liquid electrolyte.
Is ripe Brie solid?
Hot?
It doesn't have to run at 190C or something inconvenient?
The original sulphur batteries needed an auxiliary battery to melt them to start operation.
Viviane Reding,
Yes +1 on that too
There are idiots in Europe
But Kroes isn't one one of them. Her proposals are pretty consistent in trying to protect the consumer.
If Outfits like Comreg and Ofcom were not simply revenue raising arms of Treasury and mostly supportive of the Status Quo of BT, Sky, Eircom and the Mobile operators and did real protection of Spectrum and Consumer then there would be no need.
Mobile (none is Broadband) and Fixed Broadband is dishonestly marketed by almost all sellers and some don't get it that an ISP just provides a connection.
Of course a lease line or Data Centre connection isn't the same as a Domestic cable connection. The ISPs should be honest about availability, Contention, typical and minimum speeds at peak and off peak times. They should not Block or throttle any Public Internet Traffic.
They are entitled to sell EXTRA services (their own VOIP, Switched Video, Broadcast Video, Hosting, IPTV etc) but any QOS on that should only affect the person subscribing and be made clear before sign-up (i.e. your connection is up to 12Mbps with priority for your IPTV subscription, this is subtracted from your 50Mbps down and 2Mbps up 20:1 contended package with typical minimum speeds of 15Mbps at peak times and 45Mbps at off peak, you might only see 50Mbps at 3AM in the morning if not watching IPTV)
The ASA and ASAI are also complicit in the lies peddled to Consumers. Lets to start with make it illegal to call Mobile Internet, Mobile Broadband.
Broadband: Minimum of 512K (or 2M depending on Jurisdiction) and "always on" (perhaps brief reconnection on DSL once a day). Mobile 21Mbps total sector speed within 250m of mast, Minimum is 120k or no connection. It can refuse to connect or drop connections with as few as 10 users. With 5 users simultaneously streaming per user speed can be under 1Mbps.
Broadband, low latency, low packet loss to ISP router: Mobile is extremely variable up to 1000ms, can be 50% packet loss to ISP router!
Mobile is often Proxied to save Public IPs and for easier control. Broadband you have no proxy and can run low bandwidth personal services without annoying ISP (i.e. a Public Web Server is usually not allowed or sensible), Mobile typically you can't run ANY services, not even remotely turning the oven on.
Also patents
This is why Qualcomm bought Flarion and killed of its early Flash-OFDMA based 4G markets about 5 or 6 years ago. They only wanted the patents and technology.
Surely
The Bradbury Academy of Sciences.
Reality
The Swedish won't hand JA over to the US. But given suitable incentives the Ecuadorians might.
If the US had wanted him Extradited, the UK would have been far more likely to consider it. I think the US are idiots, Ecuador has only done it to annoy US and UK and JA is an egotist.
This is nonsense
There is actually minor difference between Win 3.x and Win9.x desktop.
The actual windows / applications and icons/menus on both are the same.
So what is the differences?
The desktop from Win9.x onwards is one giant global Program Manager group that can't be resized or minimised. You can create folder icons on win9.x desktop that are like Program manager groups so your main desktop isn't too cluttered.
The only real difference is the taskbar with start button. Which can easily be added as an application on a desktop Icon. Of course an Explorer window is completely different to File Manager, but that is really just a different File managing/Browsing tool integrated to the Desktop.
You can operate Win 3.1 desktop very like Win9.x except for Start Button/Task bar, is can easily be added. Nothing revolutionary or patentable.
Win 2.x Win 3.1, Gem, Llsa, Mac and others simply copied the Xerox project and each other.
MS or Apple don't deserve a single desktop patent, nor should anything like that be Patentable, only copyright protected if original.
Part of the fragmentary and Disparate nature of various UNIX/GNU/Linux desktops is due to underlying architecture of X-Windows being more flexible allowing any kind of Window Manager. The MS Windows API is quite different.
many More Browsers?
If you discount Spyware with Lipstick and simple variations they now have a choice of two rather than one before Chimera. PC Users since Opera is abandoning it's own engine have a choice of three if we apply the same criteria. There appears to be a big selection on Linux, but is there really any more choice of really viable/actually different engines than on OS X?
So another choice bites the dust.
Broadcast & H.264
All Digital Broadcast is MPEG2 and much HD is MPEG4. Some countries use only MPEG4 even for SD. TVs, PVRs, Setboxes can't use SW codecs economically. They use dedicated HW. Hence TVs, Setboxes etc with MPEG2 only can't upgrade via Firmware to MPEG4 and boxes & TVs that do MPEG4 & MPEG2 and HD can't have VP8 added by Firmware.
BD players use HW based codecs too, MPEG2 (for DVDs) and MPEG4
The "Appliance", tablet, phone and gadget markets dwarf PC/Laptops. ARM based gadgets use SoC HW in the ARM CPU for Codec and Graphics. No SW/Firmware codecs. So VP8 was dooomed from the start due to only being used for Internet and lack of built in HW support.
2K HD Broadcast will use H.265
This was not decided by the "Internet" or MPEG LA, but Gadget, Chipmakers and Broadcasters.
Re: Sounds more like 8.01
Didn't Windows 2.0 have resizeable apps?
It's a bikini on a hippo
Posted in Developer codes VNC-over-GIF tool
Umm..
What's the advantage over the ancient already MJPEG (NOT MPEG) format?
I suppose 256 colours + palette is acceptable instead of full colour and no palette.
Of course MJPEG was designed for files not streaming, but unlike GIF was envisaged to be used for video.
This is unlikely to work with any GIF viewer as they expect a file and can't read a stream. Also there is a hardly used animated version of PNG, The APNG format supports 24 bit and transparency as well as 256 colour palettes. Surely a better starting point if you don't like MJPEG (i.e. licence conditions or content non-photographic)?
An MPEG-TS can in theory be used for streaming M-APNG or M-GIF variant, MJPEG etc and not just MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 etc as it's just a multiplex envelope and has advantage it can do sound, non-image data (IP Broadcast or non-IP, even Unicast using DOCSIS) etc all in same stream.
At least he admits he can't see the point of it!
Re: Easy answer then
I think currently the EU's finest are trying to figure if there is merely Tax Avoidance (can be immoral and not what intended but not actually illegal) or Tax Evasion (Illegal) or both and if both can be reduced.
But EU and USA need to co-ordinate and pressure Singapore, Caymans, Bahamas, Switzerland etc to have the same rules.
Stage one: Make everyone report earnings in Each country. Even Tesco when reporting UK results refuse to divulge Irish figures, lumping them into the UK figures! Sky Might be breaking VAT rules on Irish subscriptions.
I'll be surprised if some (many? all?) Large Multinationals are not technically doing Tax Evasion as well as Tax Avoidance.
Winston and Stalin, and Molotov
I guess Stalin didn't let Molotov mix the cocktails.
Posted in Happy 23rd birthday, Windows 3.0
Re: This was 1990, when most people at home
Most people at home didn't have a computer at all.
DOS, CP/M, DRDOS and loads of types of incompatible dedicated Terminals all being used in small offices. Almost zero use of Windows 2.0, Windows 286 and Windows 368. Very very few Mac. Far too expensive for ordinary small offices.
In 1989, Apple disposed of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill. Never saw one.
Early Mac used ROM based OS and one 3.5" floppy. I did see some of these.
If you had serious money it was the era of the Mac IIcx, I never ever saw one of these despite working in with computers from 1979 and IT training & Support from 1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIcx
IBM OS/2 + MS LAN Manager, MS OS/2 (released 1989), DR-Multidos, Xenix, Cromix, Novell etc all being used for small office servers.
Win 3.0 was very short lived really. Many upgraded quickly to 3.1, then 3.11 which were the real OS/2 killers. OS/2 Warp was too late.
Posted in Happy 23rd birthday, Windows 3.0
Was it an OS?
Not exactly, but more than a Window Manager. Win 3.1 was a big jump, Win 3,0 was rubbish compared to Win3.1.
The Real and Standard modes very much just a GUI shell to launch DOS Programs. Win 3.0 Enhance Mode a not quite OS, but Win 9x and Win ME not quite OSes either.
WFWG3.11 properly set up with Win32s, 32 bit TCP/IP, good Graphics driver and 32 bit Disk Driver was better than Win95a and as much an OS as Win95, Win98, WinME, which is to say a horrid mish-mash and not a proper OS like NT 3.1, NT3.5, NT3.51 and NT4.0 (You could run Explorer Shell Preview on NT3.51 and Run Program Manager & File Manager on NT 4.0 instead of Explorer Shell).
Posted in Happy 23rd birthday, Windows 3.0
Infamous Filemangler?
You need two instances of Explorer to manage files, its still got UI design flaws since Win95 and more awkward for moving or copying than File Manager.
My Archos File Browser is very like File Manager. Why is it Infamous? What was wrong with it?
Mines the one with a Smart Phone, Kindle and Archos 605 in the pocket.
Channel Islands, Caymans, Bahamas, Isle of Man etc
Curiously a lot of the Offshore locations are British or Dutch offshore locations.
The problem with the Irish Taxation system is that in making Royalties tax free (to encourage artists & writers) and also trying to avoid Double taxation that it opens a massive loop hole for these Corporations to exploit.
The anti-double taxation provisions are obviously flawed as is what constitutes valid royalty payments (e.g. Starbuck's transfer of all profits to IP charges of stuff worthless on open market)
Re: Geeks.....
Also beware of Geeks bearing gifts.
That shiny USB mouse might have something extra inside.
Except
They don't pay Ireland 12.5% either.
Pointless
Twitbook is stupid. But at least for their owners there is the Knowledge BBC and other broadcasters promote it almost every radio program, also many big companies.
Tumblr should be called "Tumbleweed". They have flushed $1B down the drain. Probably even if they got both parts of Twitbook $1B is throwing money away.
They could have done something with Geocities, they owned it and it was reasonably popular. Not sure how they could have made money out of it without annoying the users, but then that's true for Twitbook, Flickr, Tumblr reddit, etc
Replaces Consoles?
HDMI port and 2kHD?
So a handheld portable AND Flash based Console for 42" HDTV in a controller.
So either it will be a Jaguar or WII in Sales depending on games. People aren't going to buy a Console any more to simply to play CD / DVD /.BD (Sony PS1 / PS2 / PS3). Maybe they think Flash makes Optical Drives and HDDs obsolete for gaming.
Re: Gates and Ballmer
No.
1) Mid to late 1970s: Gates got a friend to Port "free" Dartmouth Basic and flogged it as MS BASIC to CP/M users. Launched them.
2) Early 1980s: Bought an 8088 / 8086 rip off of CP/M and licensed it to IBM. Secured them for nearly 10 years.
3) Late 1980s to Early 1990s: Hijacked IBM OS/2 by being partner. Integrated LAN Manager to sell it as a server OS (MS OS/2 1989 after they fell out with IBM). Created Windows as a Shell on DOS copying the best ideas of Apple Lisa, Xerox Star, Digital Research Gem and IBM Presentation Manager (the Windows bit of OS/2).
4) Rebuilt MS OS/2 with some ideas from VMS (ironically a great security Model and NTFS with "Streams" because both rarely used by MS or 3rd party applications). Integrated WFWG 3.11 32bit TCP/IP and Program Manager + File Manager as NT 3.1 (This why Windows 8, really NT 6.3 approx starts as NT3.1)
5) Nearly kills embronic NT Workstation (NT Server OK) by the Evil Shell Makeover for Game Playing based on WFWG 3.11 called Win95 (no USB in 1st version, by 1994 WFWG has 32bit Disk manager, 32 bit TCP/IP and Win32s to run NT applications as well as working Multimedia). Win95 DirectX is a departure from Win API and excellent NT OpenGL really to allow easy porting of DOS Games. NT gets DirectX with NT 4.0 and no OpenGL on Win95. Win95 has 5 further versions, the Win98SE the best and Win ME the worst. Win95 success kills OS/2 Warp, but IBM mainframe people doing their best to make OS/2 a failure anyway.
6) Belatedly discover Internet after everyone else and make horribly incompatible Browsers even though based on Mosaic..
7) Dominate Office Apps, Internet Browser and Desktop. So give us the Rubbish of IE 6 then of Ribbon and Vista. Have cheek to charge for Vista fix pack as Win7.
Pippin
At least after years of loss making the Xbox is beating Pippin.
But MS had Smartphones YEARS before Apple did a phone and went down the drain years for befoore Symbian crashed. Windows phone (CE) was once 1st in USA, though never 1st worldwide. They then fell to less than 5% in USA
They also had PDAs and true Tablets over 10 years ago,
So they didn't fail to see the market, they were holding it wrong. Ballmer is useless. Most MS software in the last 10 years is either incremental or where there are big changes they are STUPID changes.
Re: Do the Windows Shuffle!
CP/M
DR Dos, (Servers Cromix, BSD UNIX, DR Multidos)
Win 3.11 WFWG 3.11 (Server NT 3.5, then Server NT 3.51)
NT 4.0 (Workstation and Enterprise Server). [Keep a PC with DOS and Win98 for specialist tools using Serial and/or parallel port]
(1999 test Linux Servers & Workstations start)
XP (2002)
(2006 Linux on one Laptop for ARM development)
( 2007 Update Server to 2K Advanced)
( 2011 Update Windows Server to Debian)
....?
2014 Maybe Linux for main Workstation, keep one XP for legacy apps?
Huh?
This isn't even new.
But 28GHz is more appropriate to feeding masts, car roofs from space or roof top aerials. My Broadband is by Fixed Wireless at 10.6GHz, the aerial panel (outdoors, high up) gets a Mast 14km away and has an array of 64 aerials in it. It's six years old.
There may be a 5G. But it won't be this.
Re: LEGO vs. Playmobile
Or the Cute version of Playmobile, Sylvanian Families. I like Lego, but Sylvanian Families is the Ultimate "Dolls House" toy to recreate "Tails of the Riverbank" without live animals? ;-)
That scheme was European.
Mullard was Philips' secret entry to the UK valve Cartel in 1928. No-one really noticed till 1939. EF36 etc isn't a British nomenclature.
There was the Marconi numbering scheme. That was British.
Also till about 1942 Ever Ready had their own scheme which replaced Lissen's in 1930s. They were mostly relabelled Mullard valves.
Some UK makers used the US scheme.
see Radiomuseum and National Valve Museum
Debian Makes Sense.
CentOs is essentially the Free Redhat so Ditto.
DRM on music
Pointless to stop real pirates
Option 1: Virtual Audio Cable
Option 2: Two sound cards or second computer.
Why does it worry me?
Eve is offering to sell me Quantum Hubs.
Re: Oh Dear
Nokia took the wrong turning sometime in 2002. Even without Elop they were doomed. As if he is slowing or accelerating the end, I don't know. But they are doomed. It's too late. They are now really just a Marketing and Distribution company. Maybe they should flog that bit and the name to someone instead of the long drawn out demise of Kodak and Polariod?
Posted in Oz chap blows his own Google Glass
Re: Do they come with a remote?
In the big open plan office ...
Replace
"Jimmy! How do you format your disk?"
--"Format C:" he shouts
"Are you sure?"
-- "YES!"
With "How do I do a factory Reset?"
Unless you are on your own (or some sort of disability) voice control is nearly as bad as the "Heart of Gold" gesture controls.
Radio China (Not they I listen to them usually)
Radio China last night had a very critical article on Foxconn. I remember wben Foxconn made dodgy 486 Mobos.
Of course a Taiwanese company isn't a PRC Comapany.
DVD Player
How many in NK have?
Electricity,
TV sets
DVD players
It's a baffling story. Hope my passport is where I left it.
Re: No
Yes, that's when you don't want to be taken seriously.
Re: True, but...
Yes, Watch faces have used Sapphire for maybe 50 years. Due to the fact it's much more scratch resistant. Cheap watches used to get quite poorly with scratches in a few months due to softness of the glass.
Re: Err, hang on a minute ...
Yes, Obviously Ian Fleming was paid to create Bond.
His brother though was probably a spy and reading his factual books the question that's in my mind is why was he there if he wasn't a spy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Tartary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One%27s_Company
" Peter and his brother Ian were commissioned by Colin Gubbins to help establish the Auxiliary Units. This was to be the "secret army" of civilian volunteers that would fight on, behind enemy lines, as part of the British anti-invasion preparations of World War II. [Peter ?] Fleming later served in Norway and Greece; his principal service, however, from 1942 to the end of the war, was as head of "D Division," in charge of military deception operations in Southeast Asia."
So Bond was a latter day "deception" exercise by Ian.
More about Peter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fleming_%28writer%29
I can't help thinking of Sherlock Homes and his less famous Brother.
Mine's the one with the "one time pads" on Rice Paper and Bubble gum.
