Posts by Bob H

Too scary?

My brother lets his little kids watch Scooby Doo because while the episodes can be a little tense of the little ones in the end it shows them that monsters aren't real and that the good guys win through careful investigation.

OK, to us grown-ups things don't seem scary but on the scale of Scooby Doo, Dr Who might be a bit poo-inducing for the younger audience. However he wins in the end and there is often a moral to the story, which is nice to have in this age of 'shock and awe' by writers.

Paris, because nothing is too much for her.

Korean example

Having visited South Korea a few times I have come to the realisation that it isn't 4G that the UK really needs, it is a better 3G network. There were femotcells everywhere to re-enforce the network, particularly in shopping centres and around restaurants/bars. This meant that when I wanted to look something up on my smart phone it was dramatically faster than under the same conditions in urban UK. I concede that coverage in rural areas could also be improved but in reality just improving 3G coverage in those areas would cost much less than a 4G roll out and those areas would be grateful. In many parts of the developing world mobile internet is preferred because wired infrastructure is expensive to deploy and expensive for the consumer.

If a rural community wants high speed broadband why not have them get a microcell installed on the local church or community centre. They could then all take advantage of 4-10Mbit/sec mobile broadband.

All of this depends on the mobile operators being interested in femtocells. Orange seem to not care about them, only Vodaphone has yet deployed them and I haven't heard good things about that. I would also like to see public wifi 802.11n roaming become easier for consumers. In theory this can happen with WISPR but if more companies provided roaming enabled wireless we would all be better off.

Paris, because she gets around with a fat pipe.

hmm

Well, I could probably identify at least half a dozen spectrum analysers in London alone, most of which are idle for over 80% of their lives. They are not placed to avoid local signals they are just not connected to anything useful in they way of antennas. The issue would be finding antennae of sufficient bandwidth and gain to meet the needs of such a survey. But more significantly there is no standard protocol for controlling spec analysers, downloading over serial or going us stunningly slow on most kit I have used. That is if even the output can capture the spectrum or if it is only practical for control. The most consistent output us, oddly enough, video (cvbs).

not just chip fabs to worry about

Reportedly there will also be a dramatic shortage of high grade discrete components. Watch out for the supply of quality electrolytic capacitors in particular. I was with a groupif industry people yesterday and most said IC production was less at risk than analogue components and descretes.

We tend to focus on the big buck headline components but it is most often that the smaller components cripple a production line.

Paris, because she knows it isn't all about the silicon.

Pffft

I received a SuperHub recently when I was convinced to move to 30Mbit/sec. I now get 22Mbit/sec instead of 18Mbit/sec and my VoIP no longer works. Great.

Bob

Explains...

That explains why ARM is concentrating on 48-bit memory space rather than just doubling to 64-bits.

Bob

food for thought.

The trick I think a few people have missed here is that you have an interpreted language but with the optimisations of a commercial engine being run on millions of instances (V8). Look at what is being dine to improve JS performance in the name of browser wars! This isn't simply about making commercially sensible decisions for the design of a language, this is about having a platform you can interface with millions that can be written by thousands and deployed anywhere.

As was said ASM is faster, C++ is more powerful, but are they meeting the commercial needs of those companies and their deployment models. There are no new stories, no new songs, yet we still move along.

Android please...

Give me one for Android and I'll be able to add all the ones that jump out on me each day.

WOW

Prices start at £825?

Wow, does it come with gold plating on the back?!

Oh the joys

Does make me laugh when one department of a company doesn't use the resources of another part of the company which has been doing the same thing for decades.

Mines the one with the Freeview HD compliance logo, DLNA player, & server (beta).

Bob

Na.

Without network functionality or a S/PDIF input £245 is a bit too over priced for my liking.

Hmm

Obviously they would do their own thing, but it would seem to me to make sense to build a PCI-Express card like Fermi but which wasn't dependent on a host processor because it had its own cores. Then you could have a backplane-based computer like some industrial PCs have had for decades. You could then build a commodity HPC cluster which scaled along the PCI-bus without special hardware. For more than the PCI-E bus could handle you just attach the interconnect of your choice to the PCI-E bus and link multiple backplanes into one giant commodity HPC.

Then start playing Crisis on your 10 CPU-GPU hybrid system.

ARGH!!!

Still no GigE?! Why isn't this standard by now?!

They give you 11n wireless and yet don't spend a dollar more on GigE?!

hmm

I too would have liked to have seen the author mention the lack of support for other platforms as well.

Gear4 do need to consider an android app at least!

WTF??!

Let me get this straight: twenty. thousand. dollars?

Ok, I'll be reasonable and say it is fairly unique... at the moment. I'm waiting for a well priced product based on the quad-core Marvell XP chipset and hopefully it will cost less than a car!

Bob

Just took a look

Hey, I'm all for the police not harasing innocent individuals going about their daily lives and I firmly believe in the right to peaceful protest, but having read some of that site I see that these are just the usual neo-anarchists who use barrack room lawyer tactics to serve their own devious purposes.

There is no moral high ground when you advocate destruction of evidence and there should never be denials of violent acts.

They are clearly not noble in their cause.

wow

In the USA your cell providers really screw you!

I pay so much less per year in the UK and all my minutes are bundled as well as unlimited internet.

I bought an unlocked Android Nexus One when they were released and that has now allowed me to negotiate my contract down further, from good to silly good.

Personally I think you are perhaps missing a trick not using your cell phone as a mifi point, my Android does it comfortably. even if it is slightly against the terms of service to use a phone teathered I figure the little I do it won't hurt.

Still, I feel sorry that you are being so screwed. When I renegotiated my contract they said I was a high-tier customer, so I could have any phone for nothing *and* I pay half your rental for a passable service.

My sympathies to our American cousins.

Flash... aaahhh... one in a million

Yup, perfect for bulk writing USB flash disks for distribution on a modest scale.

Former lecturer and industry technologist

Commenting not specifically programming, but technical jobs in general:

I was a lecturer and the biggest problems I have seen are related to motivation. I have countless stories of students who "can't be bothered", they aren't self-motivated to work hard and get results. Yes, it is the duty of a lecturer to inspire, but when good students aren't even bothering to go for decent qualifications in the first place, or drop out within the first week because it is a bit difficult getting up in the morning, then what are you to do?

Yes, you could blame funding, but funding will always be tight and you have to make do with what you have to hand. In my experience senior academic administration doesn't help, being administratively disorganised and unappreciative of industry requirements. A great many of the "employability" courses that are added to the curriculum are useful, however sometimes a course leader will end up putting things in there to meet some obtuse requirement that made it into the validation documents and also to avoid the hard grind of teaching to depth on any one subject.

Mainly though I think we need to look more at family and the messages that society brings than the courses themselves. British society doesn't tell you to aspire and to work hard, it tells you to win something and/or become a 'famous' 's'leb'. Betterment is seen as discriminatory and deprivation is a right for individuals as much as a burden on society. People shouldn't be forced to be better, they should be allowed to be squalled. The everyone shouldn't have to actually do anything for the money they *deserve*, they should just turn up for a few hours, surf facebook and get paid an executive rate. *Of course* the poor *deserve* their iPhones, designer trainers and lifetime supply of JJB sportswear!??

I highlight the bottom of the market because that also reflects all the way up to the middle-class and beyond. The British *CBA* attitude needs to be tackled as much as anything else. Then perhaps students would be self-motivated to tackle the big challenges and to make more with the wealth of opportunity that being in Britain has to offer.

erm...

You can already carry on duty free in the EU, you have always been able to because it is sold in sealed bags with the receipt often in or stapled on the bag.

I imagine this will make it possible for already purchased perfume bottles, and other such accessories to be carried through security.

Hmm

This is quite cute, if it doesn't cost much then it could be worth getting for SWMBO...

Interesting

Sounds like the kind of thing that Hutchinson/3 should be looking at to gap fill their network. I think companies would pay a premium for extra rural coverage.

!Froyo

I believe Android 2.x requires 256MB of RAM so these devices are unlikely to be able to support Froyo.

Still waiting for a decent review of the ViewPad 100

Bob

Next

I was tempted, then I realised I probably want the 10in model, especially as that one has Windows 7 and Android. Leave it running Android and turn off the phone+GPS to keep the battery topped up, then you have a laptop about in reserve when you need it.

Bugger the iPad, that an Android+WINtel tablet really is a laptop replacement. Just hope it isn't horrendously expensive.

Hmmm

Arse burgers?

I'll get my coat.

24 people for three years

I think 24 people for three years is still a substantial investment, that number of programmers is larger than many decent companies have! Ok, the author is right, it won't break the bank of the mega corps, but if it doesn't work then some executive will have to explain why they weren't doing something more productive/profitable.

Not sure if 3D as a simulation of a world environment is what is needed, but making use of 3D is definitely interesting.