Posts by James Hughes 1

My thoughts precisely. I see no reason why they shouldn't add a little 'professionalism' to the development, and by that I don't mean to insult the obviously talented people who write much of the kernel code, but to say that in my job, as an alleged professional, I spend a lot of time fixing bugs in product, so it's fit for purpose. Kernel developers should understand it's part of being professional. You don't get to work on the good stuff all the time.

And while they are at it, can someone fit GIT so it's usable by humans without 2 years of training.

Re: Gimmicks not needed

Indeed the iPad was a game changer. But the game has now changed. Now the iPad is similarly specc'd to many cheaper devices, and tablets are a commodity product. Now, the iPad is not really distinguishable from any other tablet.

As for comments on getting work done, my £129 NookHD+ does everything I need, quickly and efficiently. It's never crashed and seems to update itself in the background without me noticing. I'd be hard pressed to say it was any worse or better than an iPad of whatever vintage.

As for 64bit, you may get a slight performance increase in the right circumstances. But do tablets really need it? (Notwithstanding that, end of next year nearly everything will be 64 bit anyway due to marketing pressures, not because of any major advantage in using it)

Re: @Pierre Castille - No Chance in Hell

I believe the pods are much closer together than 45 minutes, and I cannot see your argument that driving or planes will be as quick as this.

Depends on your definition of faster. Faster to run, slower to develop, slower to fix, slower to port to a new architecture.

Re: Bogosity @Pete

It's 2M actually (or very close).

If its easy for schools to drop SW on their PC's and use them for programming, they should do it, the Raspi is just an additional tool, intended more for the people at home than the schools themselves.

And if you think an A20 is so much better, and the boards so much better designed, well, try some benchmarks, and look at the sales figures and the community support behind them.

Re: Taste of own medicine?

El Reg is reporting on an article on the Telegraph website, so little point in bringing up El Reg's stock in trade, which appears to be irrelevant.

Re: How friggin awesome is evolution!

I think you find this is intelligent design at work. Although that does imply that the head of design is a grasshopper mouse. Which is a bit H2G2.

Usually the joke icon is reserved for, well, jokes.

Re: Secure? D'oh!

But how many users even know how to set up what you just described (I don't!)...

Re: iPad looks good to me.

Chinese cheap tablets sell well, and generally work fine. Not as quick, but handle games and video playback well, both of which are a major use case.

But if you want to go a bit more expensive? I just bought a 9" Nook HD, for £129, and its utterly great. It does absolutely everything I need just as well as an iPad would (not to say that would be the same for other users). So, can anyone explain what benefit the extra processing oomph of this latest iPad is?

Re: Fragmentation grenade?

How can you have been running it for 20 years when you are only 13 years old?

Anyway, as it's my call, I run Ubuntu, and I have found something that works.

Re: Most Importantly

Did you read the bit about not yet being many details available?

Consider that a lot of the infrastructure code people are talking about above was actually written by people employed to do so, and then contributed by their employers, so in effect is 'professionally' written. On the whole the bloke in his bedroom writing code is not a major contributor to this sort of SW.

For non-kernel, non-infrastructure programming, it's a different kettle of oarfish. And the quality of that is often not as good as it should be.

Re: It could be (but probably isn't)...

WTF? Did you actually watch the video? Or any of the previous videos of the grasshopper in flight? They land where they took off from! It's not rocket science...oh, hold on....

This sort of pinpoint landing is pretty easy once you have the control systems in place. Which they do. Also watch Armadillo aerospace videos, or Masten Space systems demonstrating exactly the same thing (but on a smaller scale)

Re: Charging.....

Just about to post something similar. Surprising how many people don't know there is a charging spec for USB that go up to 5A.

But then, Google/Wikipedia is such a difficult thing to use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#OMTP.2FGSMA_Universal_Charging_Solution

Re: Great idea....

Weird. I had a BBC micro, used it through school (A level CS) and University (had a Pascal compiler, and was faster than using the overloaded MicroVAX), and when I left, had no problem at all adapting to the PC which by this time were taking over.

A computer is a computer - learn to use program using one language and it's not a huge move to another one. And Linux is getting bigger (if not on the desktop, but that's another story).

Re: Mr Blue Sky

Well, given most of the population of the planet, when presented with a decent description, would gibber and their heads would explode, probably not a good idea.

Re: Interesting

This may be relevant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TssbmY-GM

Re: Control

Gyroscopic effect? The flywheel wants to continue in a straight line. Rotate it and Newton mean you move the other way.

Re: Real-world time

Ah, but to be honest, one look at this thing, and the first (well, second, after - cool idea with the tilting panels) thought you have is 'that'll fall over the first time they hit a bump on a corner". So it's less a matter of testing, and more of finding someone who know a little about car dynamics (and Formula Student would probably help there).

It is odd that they only found the problem at the event itself though. I guess all their testing was on very flat tracks, which is understandable since they cannot actually test run it legally on a road in the UK.

Re: One question not covered

I'm guessing it's someone who has actually had to use GIT (or had it foist upon them). A hopelessly badly designed effort at a distributed SCCS. And I have to use it everyday. Any SCCS where you need to be more highly trained than you need to be to write the code in the first place has got it priorities wrong.

CoG too high. Indeed. Quick glance at height vs track shows it must be pretty easy to put on its side, and I am guessing at higher speeds it starts to oscilate . Shame, as apart form that major design problem (!) , the rest of the thing looks pretty good.

Re: It will also be handy for

Plenty of choice. St Ives->Earith->WIllingham->Rampton->Cottenham->Histon->Cambridge /sarcasm

Wouldn't fancy living in any of those places once the tolls kicks in...traffic is going to be dreadful. Tolling the A14 is an insane idea - there simply are no viable alternatives.

$60 apparently, although that may just be rumour.