Posts by Mage
1795 posts • joined Friday 23rd November 2007 08:43 GMT
Page:
Bonding
That's why they are not doing 1Tbps. It has to be cheaper than bonding (i.e. cost per bit must be lower) since it's fibre only and many fibres in one cable is no big deal.
So they must think 400Gbps optical can be be cheaper than 2 x 100Gbps. In a reasonable time frame. Since the 1 out of 62 was only voting to decide later, the 400Gbps is pretty unanimous.
"It's Ethernet, but not as we know it, Jim."
400GHz happens to be around the upper limit of currently available Microwave ICs. The folks using these buy bare chips rather than fully packaged parts. Perhaps there will be Soc pairing with a laser diode /photo diode interface?
Adult Book?
I've been assured it's a book for Adults and not an Adult book
Debian
This is just the latest in Ubuntu losing the plot.
Also Phones, 7" tablets and regular screen+keyboard+mouse need different GUIs. The one fits all approach with GUI best for a Touch 7" tablet is as stupid as MS putting regular windows GUI on a 3.5" 320x240 PDA Windows CE.
LTE is working fine?
Since it's not compatible with the majority of LTE bands (and thus most countries), that narrows down the location of the complainant.
He'll soon meet a helicopter.
Magic
Priceless.
I wonder did a Parent or Grandparent of Michael Grimm the Republican work with McCarthy?
Hmm.
Watch out for strange plants around the same time. XKCD can tell us how many lasers it's equivalent to.
Mines the one with really dark sunglasses in the pocket.
Misleading
Battery life while actually DOING stuff is what counts.
It's what, about x5 worse than an ARM for battery life when actually running?
Posted in Apple MacBook Air 13in review
Decent? Really?
"decent display featuring a 1440 x 900 resolution." Only if it's rotatable to portrait, maybe.
That's very low. you need at least "something x 1200" to read A4 / Letter documents without scrolling. Which is why I'm waiting for the "big" kindle to get cheaper. There is no other eReader that can sensibly handle A4 PDFs. 12 years ago I had 1400 x 1050. For 10 years I've had 1600 x 1200.
These are toys. Also anything with a shiny screen *WILL* give a headache if there is reflected movement and is seriously poorer for reading than "matt". I've had "Matt" Laptop screens for about 15 years. Best CRT before that was in 1981, ACT Sirius 1 / Victor 9000
Posted in Google spikes old MS file formats
Makes no difference
The import / export/formatting etc was always rubbish anyway.
I'd avoid Google docs / apps like the plague for anything that isn't
a) Collaborative
b) Less than 3 pages.
Posted in Carbon fiber MacBooks to appear soon?
Re: Patent... really!
No, nothing innovative at all.
Posted in Carbon fiber MacBooks to appear soon?
Madness
Never mind Patent vs Design Patent vs Registered Design,
Shirley the only protection they can have is Copyright, and only if hit has a big Apple with a bite out of it. Though that was them being fans of the Liverpool Lads.
When are they switching to ARM instead of intel in the Mac Book? That would be news, yet another Apple patent where x10 or more was invested in the "Patent" process than any real R or D isn't news. It would be news nearly if there was a halt on these.
Re: ...but how many of those downloads got erased seconds after trying the app?
So it's like a PC then?
Google?
I imaging that Google will snap this up. Most of their good stuff is bought in and EVERYTHING they have is to sell adverts. Search is important to them.
You can't sensibly search for images on t'Webs currently unless they are labelled, Though recently Google has been using the surrounding text to "guess", sometimes with hilarious results.
Posted in Chip strip reveals 'handmade' Apple A6
Thermal & Standard sub parts
Looks like library parts placed into a die to maximise spacing and reduce thermal issues. Only Intel with their insanely over complex designs needs to "fill" the chip.
Any layout is a mix of autorouting and manual expertise or else anyone could buy the tools and do it.
Posted in Einstein's brain FOUND ON APPLE iPAD
Hmm.
Isn't this like trying to understand art by analysing the pigments?
Operating Temperature?
I thought Sodium batteries
a) Had to run Very Hot.
b) Are quite fun if water gets in.
But maybe I'm thinking of Sulphur batteries and metallic Sodium.
Posted in What does Steve Wozniak do at Fusion-IO?
remind me
Apart from the success of the Apple II what actually has Woz done since?
P.S. I bought an Apple II
But I had to add a real display card, a real keyboard, and proper disk 8" drives to do any real work other than a spreadsheet.
We made a lot of money repairing the Aztec SMPSUs in ones under warranty for Dealers. I've sorted out HW & SW problems on other people's Macs, but never bought another Apple product.
No they are idiots
It's getting widespread. But in fairness to Humanity only a tiny proportion (< 1%) are prepared to worship it and queue for it..
It's just a "smart" phone. Not penicillin or sex
Re: supply constraints spin
The ONLY good thing ever really is the slick user interface. No Apple phone was ever good value or a good phone if your main interest was simply phone calls,
Not posted from my myPhone, but from my 1600 x 1200 laptop.
In general there seems to be a lot of fondling the [smart] phone to waste time or be rude while in company. Maybe when the novelty wears off people will be a bit more polite in their [smart] phone usage.
Replace Ping Pong balls with balls of charcoal or Coke
And Liquid Nitrogen with Liquid Oxygen.
Um... do it outside and stand further away ...
Posted in The Jupiter Ace is 30
Test
It was great for writing programs to test stuff. I forget what we connected it to. They should have had a DIN module version from the beginning with an expansion I/O backplane. That would have been a niche market but successful.
I gave my personal one away circa 1973. The Pac-Man game ran well. Being able to use any number base was "unusual". Base 32 anyone?
Forth and of course HP RPN calculators are a bit Marmite.
Posted in UK.gov squatting on £1bn IPv4 motherlode
The US
Each major US University, many US tech companies and US DOD have 100s of millions of unused or unnecessary IPs
Flexibility vs Consumption
A "Digital" radio is very flexible but eats more power. Most data radios have been mostly digital for years, there is a Analogue filters, rx rf amp (LNA), tx RF amp (pa). Other companies such as Analog Devices and Qualcom do have chips that work by aliased ADC. You CAN sample 2400MHz RF at only 200MHz as long as there are no signals +/- 50MHz either side of the 2400MHz. The 200MHz sampling by nyquist means the max data bandwidth is 100MHz, so 50MHz bandwidth is fine. If you sample 2 channels at a 90 phase shift you can double the resolution.
This will (a) Be way behind Analog Devices and Qualcom "Digital Radios" and (b) take more power, the significance is the Atom CPU cores.
But Analog and Qualcom have chips (SoC) with ARM cores. Much much less power hungry.
The real reason
Is to reduce the ***Liability of the Bank*** for card fraud. It's a PIN, so you gave the card & PIN to someone else or took the money yourself. A Signature makes it easier for the customer to prove it WASN'T them (thusly the bank has to pay).
Fantasy
To believe VOD and pod casts will replace Linear Broadcasting. They are complementary.
Obviously
The ancient Martians totally destroyed the environment and created these Noahcide clays by Nuclear war?
Re: Ofcom
The spectrum should be leased at nominal pepper corn rent and income made from taxing the Operators. Spectrum should NEVER be allocated on basis of max immediate revenue of auction, but the USE and value as infrastructure to the Nation.
Management.
"White Space has massive potential,"
To destroy the protected status that Broadcasts to the home have had for the last 90 years.
It's a bonkers idea that is doomed to create inference. People will add big aerials, "after burners", patches to disable database look up etc.
Also anything like this is a disaster in Europe until CE approvals are pro-actively policed and interference sources shut down Ofcom are already bad and Comreg are already useless at this.
They can't even get noisy CFL lamps and wall warts right never maind "Digital Dividend" and mains Networking.
Re: What amazes me...
NT?
Which one
3.1, 3,5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1 or win 7 which is really approx 6.2
I suspect they mean 4.0, but it should say so
So even though you get Win7 pretty much automatically if you don't buy an overpriced Mac, it's only 0.3% ahead of the 11 year old OS?
written on
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
Which is that the patent system gives us a huge social benefit.
That I agree with. But that was obscured by the rest of the rambling. Not up to your usual quality of writing, which I think is good even when I don't agree with the conclusions.
I believe in patents. But there needs to be tighter control on what gets a patent. Most should NOT be approved. This started in 19th Century USA and got worse. Totally frivolous claims that should be thrown out because of prior art or too broad.
The system doesn't even really need changed. The problem is the people implementing it.
Re: Beer can shares
Without the enjoyment of drinking the beer.
50 cents to $1 is maybe a reasonably high value. I can't imagine WHY anyone bought at the IPO price
Apple can't sue
Too many buttons :-) for Apple (not too many for gamers)
[Lack of] Availability of compelling games is the issue with all new handheld gaming platform.
How General purpose is it too? Has it got decent resolution or the same dots as a 4" approx screen?
It would want to be more open than the Archos 605 WiFi was.
Re: sovereignty only important for your country
Let me see UK & Sweden:
Which one is more likely to extradite to US?
Which one hosts Wikileak servers?
It's complete nonsense to suggest Sweden is more likely to extradite him to US.
Re: First Tokyo, next London?
Maplin overpriced?
By about 4:1 to 10:1. Even including the postage from Hong Kong.
A visit to Maplin is pointless.
Re: Recent Reg News...
But it was already patented years ago. Yet again the USPO is useless.
Sharp?
LG also make phones.
I thought Sharp was the development partner on this for Apple (= company that does the real R&D rather than knock off redrawn copies of old patents).
Mine's the one with an old copy of Wireless World showing an integrated touch + LCD display.
Ironic that Apple is purely an Importer to USA and Samsung has actual manufacturing jobs in the US (assuming Texas is in the USA?)
Davik & JVM?
Obviously the Interface was copied. It wasn't then a huge OS. So not that hard to re-write some of it.
Intel released an 8080 to 8086 translation tool. What match is there if you you pass the source 8080 Assembler of CP/M through that and compare the produced 8086 code with MSDOS 1.0?
What ever about the fine detail...
ARM is looking viable.
So why doesn't Intel have its cake AND eat it?
Intel has their own foundry
Intel has some of the best production, marketing and process engineering
Intel has an ARM licence, and certainly after the ARM chip sale to Marvell kept one or two Comms SoC.
So why isn't Intel making an SoC with four ARM cores, massive L1 cache, all the I/O (disk I/O) & memory interfaces... Just add RAM, ethernet magnetics and power?
It's not an either or. With MS promotion of ARM, likely Apple move to ARM for Mac Air and later all Macs and Intel promotion of Linux what is their problem?
Hmm
I remember a Tiled GUI, some while before Windows 1.0
How is this "modern"? Instead of "touch screen with finger" we had "touch screen with light pen", which meant that large areas of black could not be used. Some screens had three brightnesses of green and black.
Re: RIM on the Edge?
They can probably get a bit for QNX too as it's a viable alternative to VXworks on some Industrial /Embedded application (exclusively the use before RIM bought it) where Linux for whatever reason isn't appropriate.
RIM on the Edge?
Since other Push services now exist and increasingly real IMAP & POP email as well as Web Mail and other phone maker have been offering Blackberry form factor and RIM client the phones are pretty much doomed.
Likely only IBM can leverage some value out of the Enterprise services, competing with Exchange and its cloudy alternatives.
My advice to RIM, sell the patents (which mostly should never have been approved) and the Services, then shut up shop rather than wasting more money on developing , marketing and making phones that are competing with Windows Mobile and Symbian for bottom place.
Stark, utilitarian feel
Well, tidied up and and bit more functional, then it won't get in way like Win8 / Vista-7, OS X and some of the more barmy newer Linux desktops.
Folks need to realise that ONE DOES NOT FIT ALL! You need different flavours of GUI for different classes of device.
Re: Cough...
Also you could get NT3.x and NT4.0 on a PPC
Re: What are they smoking?
Capacitive touch screens were not that expensive, Just unwanted. Even Apple brought out a product that used resistive touch screen because to them the handwriting was important (Newton). Rather than improve it they scrapped it.
Palm then dominated that market and got the handwriting / sketching going well. It was some good deals with operators for 3G Data that made the original iPhone more attractive than other smart phones. Before the iPhone came out I couldn't afford to use 3G for data except in an emergency or if work was paying (PCMCIA data card on PC).
Phones before the iPhone had rounded corners and flat fronts. Not all were candybars.
Marketing and partnered deals and the Apple "cool" factor made the original iPhone a success. The HW was all commodity standard designs and the iOS style GUI was done before too.
Re: Stylus required
Capacitive touch screens go back at least to the 1980s. But in the late 1980s we thought sketching and handwriting and using a remote desktop was important. All those need a Stylus and the higher superior precision of the resistive screen. The Capacitive screen was regarded as inferior.
Trolltech actually had two versions of their UI, one like "Windows" that needed a stylus occasionally and a 2nd one for "finger use".
Apple's innovation isn't in HW at all. But being at the right place and right time to market a phone and UI more for Media Consumption and "Joe Public" than most (but not all) the previous smart phones all orientated really to business use and data entry.
Their UI is a logic and obvious progression from mouse or stylus UI (not quite the same as you realise if you try to use Graphics tablet instead of a mouse on "standard" OS 9, Linux, and Win95/NT. Hence a tablet edition of XP.
They don't deserve to have more than a handful of patents. They are brilliant at marketing. Shame on them for attempting to block any decent competition when the SW & HW and shape of their own products is almost entirely based on Prior art . But USPO doesn't do due diligence, it's apparently up to people with very expensive lawyers to challenge every claim in a Court system that assumes Innovation is American and everyone else is cloning..
Well, is it a big deal?
1) Macros are often badly written, badly designed and a vector for Malware.
2) Libre Office / Open Office
3) Goggle Docs (Yuch actually).
Obviously someone may have existing Macros they want to use. But generally it's a sign that someone is trying to (mis)use a spreadsheet or Word Document rather than get a proper application or use a real database.
I bought my last copy of MS Office in 2002. I'll not bother buying updates anyway.
Extended support for Windows XP finishes on 8 April 2014,
So,
less than 2 years to get to terms with Linux or write a replacement.
Of course unlike "eat within two days of opening" cooked meats, XP won't go "off" immediately. Whatever we move to it won't be Apple Candy or MS Metro shiny windows.
Hundreds of MS CDs and DVDs here. Won't be buying more product from them. Unless maybe a games console for some kids...
