Posts by Quentin North
16 posts • joined Friday 30th November 2007 16:49 GMT
this is nothing compared to last years winner
The brilliantly titled Cooking with Poo
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17560468
Core!
I remember when all application data was stored in non-volatile memory for processing. Back then it was called a Core Store. Perhaps someone will re-invent backing store sometime soon.Drums anyone?
Dark energy
There is some real dark energy in that tag, dude!
Tags: Erwin SchröDinger
But what about the Windows?
How would this system cope with Windows? I mean the see-through type that cant easily be projected on. Of course, it could be a BSOD.
Who pays?
Setting aside the technical and capacity issues possibly arising from using what is, essentially, a point to point communications channel for broadcast purposes, the key issue with this for me is who pays for delivery?
In TV over the air broadcast, setting aside the UK licence fee as a contributor to cost, the broadcaster pays for delivery through contracting transmission services. In the current model of either cable TV or internet provision the customer pays for delivery through cable on ISP fees. It would seem to me that such a shift to wired provision only would end up transferring the cost of delivery to customers and away from producers. This seems like a bad idea to me as a consumer of TV, and an especially bad idea for people with low incomes, such as pensioners, who currently get TV delivery free of any charge. Even if there was a universal service requirement this would not be without a significant cost per home which must be met somewhere whilst with over the air delivery it is negligible.
iPads in the enterprise
We use iPads in the enterprise here, but they are used as an adjunct to desktop/laptops not a replacement. For example, at meetings we all bring iPads now and make notes on them and read documents on them. We also use iPads (and smartphone, a mix of iphone or android) for telephony using softphone clients.
I agree that an iPad will note be used for writing that 20 page tender document or for complex budget forecasting, but it is used to distribute the documents and viewing wherever and whenever needed.
Before PPC there was 68K
For those of you who go back far enough you will recall that the PPC to Intel migration was not the first time Apple had changed platform with minimal disruption. Prior to PPC being the processor of choice all Macs were based on the 68K chipset and when Apple introduced the PPC processor they included a pretty decent 68K layer in the os which allowed old applications to still run. In fact 68K support was still in Mac OS X right up to 10.4 if I recall correctly. The original term "fat binary" derived from having 68K and PPC in one application package, feature made possible by the use of the Mac OS resource fork file structure.
Just to be clear
The problem with nuclear fission is the waste produced and its storage. This accounts for the vast majority of the costs and risks of using nuclear and in the UK, at least, is currently paid for through government subsidy. The current UK cost for nuclear waste is estimated at £48bn. It is the waste production and management that Greenpeace are against when considering nuclear. Should fusion become viable, much of the waste problem goes away and it really does become a clean renewable.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-126360/High-cost-nuclear-waste.html
Posted in Best and the Rest: ARM Mini PCs
SheevaPlug/DreamPlug
Surprised you didnt mention the 1.2Ghz ARM based SheevaPlug and DreamPlug computers. I use these as servers running debian or ubuntu mostly, but they can make great little desktops too.
Re: Don't look too much at the past
Have you actually tried EVE? Like programming computers today as opposed to yesterday, its just bloody impossible to keep the whole thing in your head at once.
BSOD
I wonder if the BSOD will take a new, more literal, meaning in the future.
O level in Computer Studies
When I was at school in 1973 we all had to do a year of Computer Studies and then we could opt to continue to do in O-level (GCSE you would call it now, but as a written exam). At 11 we were taught a pseudo assembler called CESIL (Computer Education in Schools Instruction Language) and at 12 we started to program in BASIC. All this was done on coding forms that were sent off to the local polytechnic for punching and batch processing and we got the results back a week later. At 13 we were introduced to timesharing systems and at 14 we got FORTRAN and GINO-F (Graphical packages for plotted Input and Output).
Why they stopped doing these courses I do not know, but computer education in schools has a long history and is certainly not a new initiative.
Posted in Teletext toddles off as licence taken
Teletext nee Oracle
You might recall that the previous ITV Text licence holder was Oracle. Look what happened to them since they quit the TV Text business!
DEC, HP, DG, etc minis still alive today!
If you have a fascination for how computing was in the 70s, or grew up with them as I did, you can get that retro experience with SIMH, a simulation platform for a variety of classic computers. I have both a VAX VMS and an HP2000 Access system running on my Mac (both OS are licensed for for free for hobbyist use). More info at http://simh.trailing-edge.com/
Incidentally, Essex ran MUD on a Dec System 10 and not a PDP-11. Oslo also had a copy IIRC. I recall BT PSS demo accounts were regularly traded for communications.
Posted in 7-year-old faces M&S Inquisition
HSBC do this also
HSBC asked to speak to my girlfriends 6 year old son to get his agreement that they could allow his mum to operate his account on his behalf. She put him on the phone, and predictably, he did not understand the question. The result was that they would not allow his mum to operate the account until she went in person to the account branch with various forms of id and completed a paper form filling exercise.
Posted in Virgin downs 1and1 and Germany
VM adsl has gone down hill
When I joined Virgin.net on ADSL 3 years ago, the service was good and the product reliable. In the last 6 months I have suffered outages, reduced performance and deplorable customer service.
The latest is that I am required to prove that my boradband is not meeting the service level by using speedtester.bt.com, which itself does not reliably work and which consistently fails for me as it cannot verify the domain I am connecting from. VM wont accept that my ADSL is failing unless I do speedtests on this service which I cant because it causes an error each time. Catch-22.
The off shore call centre at 25p/minute does not help either, referring me to their online "chat" support which does not work on my Mac.
