Posts by Robert E A Harvey
2414 posts • joined Sunday 8th October 2006 16:17 GMT
Page:
Been wondering about that
DER rented out tellies (and in their early days washing machines and fridges) for nigh on 50 years, until they became too cheap to bother.
When home computing started they rented a few comodore pets & apple ][s , but discovered that the public could not tell the difference between "its broken" and "I am a shit-kicking yokel who doesn't know the first thing about computers" and very wisely dropped the scheme.
Good luck to Mr Google with that.
Wirth
I wonder if he could give evidence?
I bet he wishes he'd patented everything in his book!
more suggestions
"Please explain" - big question mark
"I remember" - Grandfather clock? abacus? punch card?
"I agree wholeheartedly" - Big Tick? +1? Two heads?
"Der-brain" - big head, litle brain?
Apple's only declining segment was iPods
well, there can't be many more to sell - surely everyone who wants one has got one?
Posted in Hardware boom boosts IBM in Q1
Big contrast
oh look. http://www.reghardware.com/2011/04/12/context_uk_pc_sales_q1_2011/
'UK PC sales during the first quarter of the year were down 7.7 per cent, well below the European average of 2.9 per cent."
Looks like IBM is doing even betterer than the article suggests. Or is this another manifestation of Obama's 'spend yer way to affluence' policy?
not trying hard enough
>when we have full coloUr, high resolution, roll up, flexible displays
Passe - we want direct neural connection, and we want it now!
@Anomalous Cowherd
The lens/camera combo sounds marginally less likely to kill you too.
buglisting this idea
I've raised https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36400 to suggest relocating controls in LibreOffice
more suggestions
IR pyrometer,
electric/magnetic field non-contact sensors,
A load cell so you can weigh tiny tings to high resolution (what /could/ you use that for?)
anenometer
Hygrometer
ultrasonic distance measurer for estate agents
HURRAH!
At last, some value from taxes paid!
one born every minute
>equally amusing that companies such as Microsoft believe people want to
>use Cloud based "services" such as this in any sort of meaningful volumes
Can you say "Royal mail"?
dear god
30,000 POUNDS? Are they serious? Seems like a very expensive way to beat the congestion charge to me.
For that sort of money you can get 3-and-a-bit Citroen C1 1.4 HDi Rhythm, they are plain diesels that do 60mpg That will be 12 seats for the price of 4!
Include the lifetime carbon (build and recycle effects) and this is a very stupid idea indeed.
eww, creepy
right decision, mind. creepy, creepy
Posted in Oracle tests find NFC lags in execution
never fast enough
It will never be fast enough to persuade me to trust it. Far too far left field.
vertical pixels in short supply
What is it about vertical pixels? A few years ago 1024 was the norm for vertical pixels, then people went all 900 high and now we are supposed to wet ourselves because this has 1080? Why are screens not 2048 high by now?
This shift to wide-screen TV proportions has made a lot of software with its men us, button bars, navigation bars, drawing bars, status lines all very crowded. Lets put the controls down the left hand side now that we have wide screens, and give us some workable space back on the document/maths/canvas/feature area.
Dear gods, no!
>Michael Bay directing Rendezvous with Rama?
I'll not sleep now. Ugh
+1 for Greg Bear
Terraforming mars as a multi-film franchise.
me too
I think the problem is me-too management styles, where executives see an established market and want a slice of /that/. Innovation would take time, cost money, need explaining. Just photocopy what is already selling and get on with it.
You can see the same thing with compact digicams, and white goods.
Just a reminder
Don't forget that "Cold Comfort Farm" is in some wise science fiction - with video phones and private jets taken as read for the metropolitan population, to further contrast with the rural isolation.
Posted in Arcam FMJ AVR400 AV receiver
The imaging precision is pinpoint,
Umm. Care to explain? I am an old wavefront-reconstruction stereo buff, is that what you mean? But how can that possibly relate to n+1 channels? Does the supplied microphone and calibration thingy include phase delay correction? or what?
Posted in Arcam FMJ AVR400 AV receiver
Internet radio
Does the internet radio include BBC radio channels? Streaming or iplayer?
It would be tragic if I could not use this for the HD stereo used during last years proms on Radio 3. Does that work?
Well, that's the other shoe.
Hands up who was not expecting this.
Bit of a laugh
If we can have Agatha Hetrodyne, could we have Crimson dark
two remembered, one nearly forgotten
The city & the stars. Childhoods end. Clarke.
'Wild geese' Forgotten author, perhaps the commenards can help. Space ship is an Irish convent, run by a scheming Mother Superior. Wild Geese was the name for the company of lay brothers and mercenaries that ran the ship & did any fighting.
Posted in WTF is... 4K x 2K?
Stop pissing about with the tellies
I won't buy a new telly every 18months when most channels are still showing shows made when 625 was the only choice.
Stop pissing about with the screens, it's the dodgy content that puts me off, not the picture.
Posted in German prangs dad's £275k supercar
title
Boys will be boys. At least everyone is still beathing.
Posted in BBC engineers see PLT knocking out DAB
@AC 10:06
So what are you saying? Someone is having a Gigle?
Posted in BBC engineers see PLT knocking out DAB
Hate
DAB is a geriatric solution to a problem that does not exist.
Originally conceived as a way of automating radio listening so that people did not have to re-tune their car radios as they drove along, or suffer fading from multipath it was also adapted to increase the number of channels available by TDM. But we are not short of FM spectrum, particularly when so many local commercial radio stations have been merged into national conglomerates. And a serious attempt to measure the artistic quality would be very disappointing. Very dissapointing indeed.
The battery consumption of portables is appalling, and the level of technology required means that cheap radio is impossible. And the abysmal bit rates drive the final nail into the coffin from my point of view.
Oh, and as early adopters, nay originators, we are lumbered with a system that the rest of the world has moved on from.
We have internet capacity enough and satellite channels that cover all the stations (although the satellite channels are under-utilised, being fed from the low bit rate DAB channel in too many cases). Our american cousins, for all their failings, have adopted satellite receivers for cars rather than DAB, and we could do the same. On the subject of internet capacity, that could be improved if ISPs put simple caching servers in the exchanges, so that multiple consumers of radio or tv could be given a single feed over the backbone, rather than multiple identical feeds occupying bandwidth.
And yes, I live in an area which is "marginal" for DAB, but then it is "marginal" for FM, DVT, rdio 5 MW, and broadband as well. If DAB were any good I'd be putting up antennae
Posted in BBC engineers see PLT knocking out DAB
"only"
Sadly, long range radio listening on HF has become pointless just as a new generation of software controlled radios was making the hobby innovative again.
I really miss listening to Strauss from Vienna on 12MHz, and one of the high points of my life was listening to the Bernstein "Ode to Freedom" performance on Deutsche Welle's short wave live coverage.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Symphony-Freedom-Bernstein-Berlin/dp/B000001GDR
Posted in STONERS are DESTROYING the PLANET
Steady on!
>real work this afternoon
Don't lets go completely down the fantasy trail...
Thought provoking
They were pretty clever stories for the 1950s, and fulfilled the fundamental law of SF in being abut the F, not the S. They made you think, and made you think about real life too. And, come on, is the bee gun not cool?
But the TV series was dire, because it concentrated on the S, all sets and special effects (both beyond the ability of the budget)
I don't think that melancholy air could easily be captured in a film, and as for Holywood doing it - well, no chance.
Price
People prepared to pay apple prices are buying apple.
Android has to take market share fromm $299 netbooks. Its no good leaving off the keyboard, Ethernet & usb & then wanting $800
Bush admin
>The reality is that the Bush Administration actually believed that Saddam had WMDs.
A fair number of then believe that the world was made in 4004BC by a sky fairy.
Troll, cos we don't have any other supernatural beings.
Posted in UK PC sales plunged in Q1
UK PC sales plunged in Q1
Would this have anything to do with the market maturing? That the PC I built 3 years ago or bought 2 years ago is still more powerful than I would ever need?
Or is it, perhaps, because I can't buy a new one without buying a new copy of Windows, which I already own?
Oh no, it's because I haven't got any money. Certainly not to splash out on something I don't need.
Posted in Nokia E7 Qwerty slider smartphone
Nokia's famous engineering talent
>what happened to Nokia's famous engineering talent?
They were either sacked or ran away when Elop picked WP7
Pseudomaths
I see that I don't need to make my customary disparaging remarks about futurologists, spurious precision, and wishful thinking. It's all been said.
But I'm going to post anyway in case somebody predicted I would. Wouldn't like them to get it wrong!
Posted in Level 3 pays $3bn for Global Crossing
soak the grannies
>the original investors get burnt and 10 years later someone gets a bargain.
Bit like the channel tunnel then. Sold off to the banks for a penny in the pound.
"He's more deluded than I thought."
>He's more deluded than I thought.
And he's a self-obsessed, self-important tosser who gets off on publicity.
Thing is, I think wikileaks is a good idea. But He's spoiling it for me.
Time of crisis
It's interesting that they can afford to set on fire a perfectly good modern outboard. What happened to the tradition of using hulks for target practice?
See, now this is proper science.
I, for one, welcome, our UCL tefal-heads. If they can connect me up to my server by the power of thought alone, I will be happy.
Companion Computing
"Companion Computing" == Please don't stop buying desktops, just 'cos we sold you this. Please. PLEASE!
unfortunately true
And, frankly, I think their introduction would help cases like this but otherwise be a Bad Thing (TM)
In theory the law is supposed to stand in for all the victims and prosecute the offender. In this case, hands have probably been shaken with infolded fingers.
there is the rub
>Probably the CPS are unwilling to proceed because they'll lose.
>That loss could then render RIPA unworkable
Someone very senior has decided that. I suspect this is what is meant by "not in the public interest".
personally I'd like to see RIPA torn up and go back to whatever we had in the 1960s.
Oh?
Out with the pitchforks, then!
QC
For years people have paid for an 'opinion' from a QC, and filed the resultant letters. They are taken very seriously by the courts as evidence of best efforts.
Doesn;t mean I approve of phorm, who all need to f*k off and die of something horrid [1], but lawer's opinions are routinely sought before going to court.
[1] Twice. At least.
yep
Even our backstreet computer store has a 7" android 1.x for 99 quid, and a 10" 2.2 for 200.
Both are a bit slow, but both have gps and usb ports.
But
But my Dell mini-10 has 3G, a 64Gb ssd, 3 usb plug'oles, wired and wifi ethernet, bluetooth, and a Sd slot, camera, microphone, two speakers, and 8 hours worth of batteries. Oh, and a gb of ram, and an atom cpu
And it has a hinge and a keyboard .
and cost me 199 quid. OK it doesn't have a touch screen, but it came with a fabric stuffsack. for 199 quid.
Yawn
20 of your earth currency units off?
Wake me up when it costs less than 250
