Posts by John Robson
626 posts • joined Monday 19th May 2008 14:40 GMT
Most typewriters had a shift key.
Multitouch doesn't mean mashing - it is always limited to sane inputs.
Foundation...
"*Though in the Foundation saga this was only possible with vast galactic populations of the far future, with humans as numerous as gas molecules in a pressure vessel, and even then it was necessary to keep the existence of Psychohistory a secret."
Presumably you're not talking about the LOHAN pressure vessel...
Re: Parking on a skyscraper
Or a smaller vehicle.
You could even suggest one with no tailpipe emissions, or one with no emissions at all...
(Excluding the driver of course)
"Over the hedge" (great kids film) has a lovely scene where the animals are gathered round an SUV - saying "wow, how many humans fit in *this*" to which the "knowledgable" animal replies:
"normally only one"
Fly home....
If they are computer controlled (and frankly I'm not sure anything else is sane) then they can just fly off home until you need them in the evening - or to a local charging facility if they are electric
Hang on a moment....
Why are politicians making these decision anyway - surely they get a budget request from the armed forces, and say "yay" or "nay" to it. Then the armed forces sign some cheques to whomever they see fit (saving some for wages, and some for war - when they suddenly need to buy alot more fuel and ammunition than normal)
But the notice is still issued by a rights holder, not the courts.
Fail.
Re: @Dave 126
Given that we have to say "no improvement will be made" to thousands of parents in that situation each year with a fleshy bag behind the wheel I think that would be of more comfort...
Re: Perv list.
I am opted "in" on my mobile connection.
Because the cycling forum I frequent is blocked otherwise...
It's really rather sad that any politician thinks that this filtering is anything like a good idea. I'm not keen on the overt sexualisation of kids which is being promoted through all the media.
Nor the rampant increase in sexual imagery being shown over all media. The internet isn't different from other media - yet I don't see restrictions on TV or print media.
There is no justification for this censorship - there is justification for education, particularly of parents. This could fairly easily be done by schools/leas - who necessarily have contact with children's guardians.
When my kids start to be able to use the computers on their own then I'll implement some filtering at home, but more than that we'll supervise them, talk to them.... No technical filter is ever perfect.
Re: Math error
No - Maths is an abbreviation of Mathematics, a multidisciplinary science.
Math is something the USians invented.
(USians - because canadians, mexicans, peruvians... are all american as well)
Cheaper earlier versions?
Does that mean???
The page refresh is alot quicker on an eink device than a tablet after 10 hours of reading...
I barely notice it any more - I'd just like to see an A5 screen so that at least A4 PDFs can be displayed in two halves at a legible size.
Other than that they're brilliant devices (even if they are single purpose)
Re: Still better than the current arrangement
You develop cold fusion and you'll have people jumping over themselves to give you enough money...
As for ARM I think that licensing for production counts as production - actully even if that license isn't being taken up (sanity check required on license cost - must have previously sold at a comparable price)
The problem with live distros...
is that you can trash the host hard disk - as I have just accidentally done to my wife's machine.
I think I can recover it - but I read el reg. I'm not a normal parent.
Re: Explains nothing
Probably wouldn't - unless it carried a VERY small amount - i.e. just a few molecules.
Then there is a (reasonable) chance that they'd all be L or D.
Posted in Dot-London squeaks under ICANN deadline
Daft...
The concept of opening up TLDs is a bit odd - maybe we should be tightening them up so that people don't feel that they have to own them all.
Given that most people I know don't use URLs anyway (google does it for them, then click on a mail link or use your address book) I can't see the benefit.
Those 2D Bar codes are also becoming somewhat more common - and make (in the world of smart phones at any rate) a good alternative to a conventional URL. Mind you various TV adverts seem to come with a FB URL rather than a company URL anyway!
Re: Transformer...
Screen/Battery/Boot times are all far better with the Asus Transformer than any netbook I've used, and better than pretty much every laptop as well - maybe excluding a MacBook air, which competes on boot times/screen.
But besides that the simplicity of use and the fact that you can just grab the screen and flop onto the sofa to "consume", and slot it into the keyboard to do some real work makes it more valuable than a tablet and a laptop seperately.
People here are a somewhat refined breed - but for *most* home users I can't see anything that I would want a PC for - I have a wireless router from my ISP, a network printer (or plug it into some routers) and maybe a small NAS, or cloud storage, or plug a USB drive into the router.
The Transformer can take external storage - SD cards, USB devices etc - it can push data to various network devices.
It can do word processing, email, FB, skype, twitter, games, media, browsing etc...
NB - I actually recommended that my parents get one - and they have. I really like it, although admit that the keyboard would take a few hours to get used to for serious work.
Corners Cut???
Let's hope they're not curved ....
You're making it wrong...
unlike certain other manufacturers...
Transformer...
In my eyes is a game changer.
I can't think why I'd buy a laptop any more.
Posted in Virgin Media's latest throttling rules
VPNs
need to be excluded for home working to be possible.
Posted in Linux 'internet of things' gizmo ships
Re: Too expensive.
Profit - and cloudy infrastructure...
Re: Prototypes are never CE marked
They've already sold the first 10k - they can't sell them again.
Re: Bureaucracy
No they weren't unaware - but dev boards are frequently not tested. The plan was to test the educational release (i.e. the cased release) later in the year.
The media got a bit excited, the foundation had to offload the distribution (and scale up production).
They're no longer dev boards by any reasonable metric.
RS and Farnell are (annoyingly, because I'm in the lucky 10k) doing the right thing.
Posted in Chrome beats IE market share for one day
Re: "Chrome catching IE slowly"?
Firefox users are unemployed, or workaholics?
Re: MRI + metal tattoos
They're actually alot more rigorous behind the scenes. But you are right - they are an entertainment show - scientific rigour doesn't make for good TV.
The Myth they actually debunked was "will your tattoo explode if you are given an MRI"
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-exploding-tattoo-minimyth.html
The results were that they managed a little excitement with bottles of doped ink - but nothing from any normal (or doped) tattoo.
Therefore they "busted" the "myth" that a decorative tattoo always explodes under MRI - not whether they could be heated slightly.
Never had an issue
on any (european) flight with reading the kindle from boarding to leaving.
To be fair the kindle isn't actually DOING anything different in "reading" mode from "standby" mode - with the exception of a few (infrequent) page turns - I can't envisage those causing any significant RF.
PS - Yes the wireless was off - it always is unless I'm actively wanting to connect to something over WiFi.
IR retroreflectors?
I'd have thought that a wiimote style collection of IR beacons around the lawn and a decent camera on the robot would have done quite well.
How undulating is the lawn - From any point on my lawn I can see the two top corners of the house (i.e. ideal locations for beacons/reflectors)
Why do OTA OTP not have an associated PIN?
Oops - TLA overload....
But would they have been quicker with a paper map?
Or any other alternative?
Surely that's the question to ask...
"“All notebooks in five years’ time will look like Ultrabooks; it’s just the way things are going,” report author Daniel Ashdown told The Reg at the time."
Really?
He can't see any use cases for any other format?
Personally I like my serial port, it's useful for a variety of things which aren't going to change, I like having an optical drive in some machines. If I don't need those, then I'll get a tablet (at the moment a transformer)
Most maybe - but I doubt all
Re: Re: Re: @ Probing analyst (PS)
Why lock it when the plan is for every student to have their own? The case will (for the educational version) be included in the price. I have knowingly bought a device without a case...
I have a great keyboard with a mini USB hub, that'll deal with the storage - or you could lose the mouse. I mean, who needs them? :)
Personally I have umpteen keyboards/mice lying around, and with networked storage (or even just a second partition on the SD card) I don't need more. An unpowered hub might be useful - maybe £2?
Monitor? I'll be using my telly thank you. A DVI-HDMI convertor might make it's way into a kit if I do buy a second for my friends kid.
Re: Re: ""It's been a phenomenal day"
Feeling smug.
Farnell have given me an EDD of w/c 12th March
Sat there participating in a manual DDOS for nearly to hours - 7:53 order time.
Although I had managed to register interest on the RS site a long time before then. I'll either decline that offer if/when it comes through or get it for a friends 8 y/old who already loves scratch.
Re: Re: Tesla is the future, old people....
@Da Weezil: As opposed to the GT40 which Jeremy RAN OUT OF MONEY to fill up in ?France? on their super car test^H^H^H^Hjolly.
Yes battery technology, or more specifically charging technology, is improving rapidly - but how often do you actually drive more than 200 miles in a day?
I can't remember the last time I did.
Posted in Heatmiser PRT-TS Wi-Fi RF thermostat
Need very low price/power thermometers (in a plug maybe)
Then I can put any PC (or an RPi) under/near the boiler for control purposes.
It'd be nice to have WiFi based valves - that report temperature and how open they are - then the whole lot could actually be configured decently - none of this "whole house" heating based on crudely set thermostats.
It would be even better if they were really low power radios, and had a little solar panel to charge from during the day or evenings with the lights on.
Re: Public electricity
Do you pay for public transport?
Public != Free
You use verified by VISA???
Why?
It's a pointless, rarely used (and therefore regularly forgotten) password that can be reset using publicly available information.
If any transaction ever shows up as VbV then I KNOW it's fraudulent - so does my bank, I have several communications with them where I state that.
(Actually I have once used VbV - I was on the phone to my bank at the time, and they purged the registration straight away)
Looking forward to it.
But strangely, more for digital cameras than anything else...
Needs a "selectively allow" option though.
There are so many apps that just ask for "everything", and I put many of these down to laziness on the part of the author, not malice.
Being able to allow some access patterns would be good. Actually as would an "advert fetching" permission, rather than full access. Then run an ad server on the phone...
Unbound?
Anyone know if unbound is affected?
2 seconds? TWO SECONDS?
I can't believe no-one else has picked up on that particular "restriction"...
Two seconds is about three times the average braking distance left on our roads. At 30mph (because driving to the conditions is impossible) that's basically 30 yards!
In 30 yards you pass how many houses? How many people? How many pedestrians?
Re: Re: Re: Simple solution
Let's try a trailer.
I manage to cycle home from work collecting two kids on the way. I can't imagine that it would be harder on a motorcycle...
Or I can go to the shops and do a week or two's worth of shopping. Or I can pop into to some nice shops on the way home, a different shop each day and I get better produce at a better price than from the "super"markets...
If they never observed motion...
How do we know the little guy wasn't trying to suffocate the big guy...
DNS based VPN?
Send data as a query, the TXT response is the reply.
I know it sucks from a latency/throughput/reliability perspective. But to try and kill DNS is a pretty interesting proposition, even for Iran...
Configurable?
It would be nice it was configurable - maybe stored in a cookie?
Than I could have those things I care about there - I use shopping, translate, images and maps. Not so much the others.
I don't know about you, but I don't think we're all identical.
Of course the chocolate factory assumes we're all too stupid - so auto-configure it. You know what I don't click on, stop filling my page with it!
Erm - only apply if your premium is already >£1000
That's what their quote me thingy said.
Not that I can fathom how the "insurance miles" are calculated / penalised...
I quite like the idea of pay as you go insurance...
RPi
That's all (Yes I know they don't care about win8 certification, but the system idea is right, and if the SoC manufacturers want to put Win8 on then you're screwed.
Except in ten years time when that fails and there is no longer any way to get anything other than Wondows 9 (because why would they upgrade after that?)
Warning, science content
The error is in counting days as rotations, and ignoring the fact that if we orbit the sun, but have zero days (i.e. it's always noon at greenwich) then we'll have rotated once, not zero times.
So if we've observed the rotation (by the sun apparently traversing the sky) 365.25 times in an orbit then we've actually rotated one more than that (of course if we rotated the other way then it would be 1 less, but we don't)
Get Bing and Google (are there others?)
to simply go dark for DC on Wednesday....
Yes it is - although only 7 left last time I looked.
Cheaper versions will be out in next 4 weeks hopefully.
