Posts by Robert Hill

@Steve Mann

ROTFLMFAO...now you just need to explain to our Yank readers what a "rasher" is...

HINT to our US readers: it has nothing to do with a skin condition, more like a pig that has lost his skin...

Want the "China Price" on your equippment???

Then get used to keyboards designed by Chinamen that don't touch type with the Roman alphabet. I would bet £10 the reason for that screw-up is because the supplier wanted to use the same keys for the left and right shift, one mould rather than two. Probably saves $0.05 per keyboard.

And you can get lead paint on your children's toys, contaminated heparin, and anti-freeze in your toothpaste.

Oh, yeah, and massive layoffs in your own country.

You get what you buy people...

That Nokia 1112 is actually quite good

Small, easy to use, and has a great battery life...used one loaned by my company for a while, and was quite impressed. Even one of my gadget hound friends used one for a year or two because it was so retro.

Two points against El Reg author though, for not saying if these were bundled with a contract, pay as you go, or SIM bare.

Yawn...

These quad cores are great, but until they can actually give a clock speed 150% higher than my current, aging AMD64 4400+ (@2.2 Ghz), it's just not worth upgrading. So few apps really use more than one core it's hard to see the benefit over a dual-core. And don't talk to me about "multiple apps": when you run move than one or two apps, your disks, video card and memory usually become the bottlenecks, not just the CPU.

QUAD CORE: the solution to a problem very few home users actually have...but a great marketing win for someone.

So much garbage in this thread...

1) Region coding exists for one simple reason: every studio wants to release their blockbusters during the peak movie-going times of the year. Only one problem - each area of the globe has DIFFERENT peak times! In the US the months of June through August are peak...but in the EU most people avoid the movies and go on vacation. The peak in the EU is actually around the winter holidays. In the southern hemisphere, things are of course reversed again... It has nothing to do with subtitles or production issues - it is PLANNED. Anyway, as much as I hate region coding, I can understand why studios do it - to support and protect the cinemas from extinction in areas that lag the US in their peak times. (BTW - if you all didn't know about peak viewing times across the globe, get off the computer and do some travelling...)

2) Watching a documentary on The Who the other night, it re-iterated that they had an absolute shite contract for much of their early career, even by the standards of the day. Hmmm. They still all drive much better cars and live in much better castles than I do (R.I.P. Keith Moon however). Saying that you refuse to pay for your music in "protest" of how little the artists get is just laughable coming from a bunch of guys that couldn't even afford to pay their bar tabs for a weekend if given a year to do it.

3) As mentioned by AC above, EVERY artist now has the total ability to opt-out of the record company system. EVERYONE can self-record, self-promote, and distribute content via the internet. The fact that so many artists still opt to be involved with record companies indicated that a) artists need the financial investments that record companies make early in their career and b) desire the long-term stability that a contract can give with a label later in their careers. Look at El Reg's IT readers : how many of you are genuine contracters for yourselves, working for your own company rather than working for someone else? Why is that, given that contract positions generally pay more? Why do you think musicians are any different in their outlook?

If musicians thought that recording contracts are such bad deals, these days they would opt-out of the system in droves. The fact that only a handful of high-profile artists have opted-out (and like consultants, it's usually very established ones) shows that most ranting here about "artists rights" are really about "freetards rights". So shut up and pay the people that wrote, funded and produced the content you are enjoying...or it won't be there forever, at least not as you know it now.

Thanks for the advice Stevie B...

What I actually have arrived at by your "come to Jesus" whinging is the following software aquisition strategy:

1) Format harddrives

2) Install Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit on primary partition

3) Install VMWare for Linux (just purchased)

4) Install Windows XP under VMWare for when I need it

5) Use Compwiz for my eye candy (which runs just fine on my current nVidia 7600GT graphics card) rather than bloated Aero....

Again, Steve, my thanks for being open. I met you in 1990 at a corporate developer's meeting in Redmond...my opinion of you hasn't changed one bit...

@Aubry Thonon

You must remember, she was the BACKUP Korean astronaut, who went up after the primary candidate disgraced himself during training by removing some "classified" training documents from the training center and brought them back to his dorm to study at night...

Good marks to the American astronaut, who didn't even blanch when confronted with homespun Russian astrotech...10gs ain't pretty, and even harder for a woman who has been in orbit for a long period of time to deal with. Too bad Danica Patrick got all the press for woman's achievement's this weekend...

Should have reviewed the u1030SW...much more interesting camera..

and the problem with your memory cards is that there are FOUR types of xD cards:

- standard grade, which are slow and have no extra functions enabled

- Type M : which are faster and enable panorama features (even Fuji's cards work if Type M I believe)

- Type H : High-speed, for faster shot to shot, and panorama (rare to find, and expensive)

- Type M+ : coming out in the next month, will enable high-res video recording without the current 10second max record time, until card memory runs out.

I suspect you had a cheap standard grade card, which has been outdated for at least two years. Anyone with a recent Oly wants a Type M or M+ to get access to the features.

The Oly 1030SW is the camera you should have reviewed though - a 28mm wide-angle lens with internal 3.8x optical zoom, shockproof, waterproof, and same sensor. A much more interesting and unique camera...

@Valdis Filks

Hitachi and Amdahl pushed air-cooled solutions because they were competing with IBM on price, whereas IBM was compteting on having better performance. IBM knew that Emitter-Coupled Logic (ECL) was a faster clocking solution than CMOS or NMOS at the time, and that despite the heat they would have a performance advantage on the very heaviest workloads.

Eventually, CMOS and NMOS gained in clock speeds, and even IBM made the transition - but acknowledged that the individual processors were slower than their predecessors. Today's energy-efficient CMOS processors require massive paralleization to compete with either more complex CMOS designs (i.e., the original scorching Pentium IV, et al) or ETL successors.

And what has the parallization of processors brought? An acknowledgement that for many sorts of problems, we can't effectively write parallel code. That's why Intel and others are crash-researching parallel coding techniques. That is why IBM continues to push the speed of individual processors, even to the point of resucitating water-cooling in the data center.

Now, that's not to say that MANY problems don't decompose well into parallel solutions: parallel databases have revolutionised data warehousing, clusters are wonders of mainstream application hosting, etc. But for several, important, and PROFITABLE types of workloads (esp. some scientific work and mathematical work, as well as some database solutions) individual processor performance are the limiting factor.

Lastly, I would be curious to see how the water cooling on these corresponds to the watercooling in old mainframes. Are they running the pipes within the case to radiator fans (as in a watercooled PC), or running them external to the case via datacenter cooling lines as in the old mainframes? In short, what is the real level of complexity?

Original TOUCH rocked...for the day

Wow, El Reg manages to say that a Version 2.0 phone that was introduced nearly a year ago is BETTER than the original, and therefore the original sucked?

Wasn't the Touch the phone that LAUNCHED HTC as an independant vendor of phones, rather than an OEM-only provider? A phone so cutting edge at the time that it frankly had no competitors in the small, like, sexy, touch-oriented camp but the iPhone?

I've had my Touch since the first week it came out, and I can only say that I will be happy to upgrade it for newer features and HSDA (probably to a HTC Polaris or a 3G iPhone), but am in no rush to do so...

And for the person saying no GPS is a loser, the HTC Polaris is essentially a Touch+ with a GPS, but no sliding keyboard...

@Peter Gathercole

The components are the same or very similar, but what has always been the differential has been the interconnects - the mainframes having a highly unique high-speed backplane, the SP/6000 having the SP High Speed Switch, and the rest using cluster interconnects. Each uniquely suited to do it's own thing for the target market (mainframe = Hulking Giant with lots of users, the SP/6000 series for parallel scientific work, and the clusters for commodity applications and mid-range databases).

@Campbell

Great points, but I think it misses one key issue:

When you outsource, you will INEVITABLY lose internal expertise, both at the developer level, but also at the strategic management level. And THAT will erode competitive ability down the road - not in the next year, but maybe 3 to 5.

I have written so much about the falacies of outsourcing that I find my fingers just can't write any more...let's just say the only ones making money at it are the outsourcing companies themselves, and it is foolish of Shell not to realize that.

It IS different...

the colors are inverted...and a different shade of blue. Probably enough to get them a legal reprieve.

I just really want a job in "branding"...I've never been paid to masturbate before...

You just know those guys laugh all the way to the bank...and the ski slopes...and their yachts...etc.

We couldn't live without amanfromMars....

amanfromMars's problem is that LSD use has really declined since he was younger...it's easier when others share the same trip...or, as Ultraviolet Catastrophe once wrote, Trip Harder...

N.B. - pending predictable comment: amfM will respond that he has no knowledge of LSD - but that is just a cover, as he may not remember his own experimental treatments...

Wow, so few comments on 2001...

but it got a lot of votes anyway!

I tied between Bladerunner (cause I re-watched it two days ago) and 2001, just because they are both so classic. 2001 just seemed to have more menace, more atmosphere, because of what it portended. But Batty's monologue was a better acted part, so it depends upon if you want to applaud the director or the actor. Given their careers, Kubrick has to beat Hauer as the tie-breaker.

But Rockhound's quote is far funnier, and a few Ripley and Hudson quotes get used far more often!

But - what, no Clockwork Orange quotes to even choose from???

"I've been out, helping people like..." - Alex

Trieste...

"*Impressive, but some way short of the all-time record, achieved in 1960 by the US's bathyscaphe Trieste which, with its crew of two, hit the bottom of the Marianas Trench at 10,900m (35,800ft)."

Yes, but Trieste wasn't REALLY American - it was built by a French father and son, who built it in...the city of Trieste, France. They could not keep paying for it's improvements and upkeep however, and sold an interest in it to the US Navy. Flush with the cash of the Americans, the Frenchmen made some further improvements, and with the son piloting, he and an American Navy officer decended once, and only once, to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. They disturbed some flatworms as they touched down, proving that life could exist at amazing depths, but conducted no other science. Hence, no one has returned, because we just didn't learn a hell of a lot.

If the Chinese need undersea tech, they certainly don't have to buy it from the US, they can always head to France and other EU states...

@Anon Coward

Yes, the sale of 3COM is just an excersise in corporate greed and VC cash. If it wasn't profitable, then the deal would not be so highly valued, and BAIN would certainly not be involved. Bain only gets involved when they see outsized returns on their investment - so there certainly is money being made, and to be made in, 3COM. So, no, 3COM is not about to wither and die...the execs and board just want to take their pile and move on to their private compounds and gated communities. And they know the economy is headed downwards towards recession, and now would be the best time to do it for the next few years possibly.

And yes, should a Chinese national company get control of 3COM, it would be outrageously easy for them to install keyloggers, secret backdoors, and all kinds of nasties on a whole generation of equippment that would then be used by US military and commecial interests. That's hard to DO in something like a PC, where the basics of the CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge, etc are all made from existing silicon, but a lot easier to hide in embedded systems that happen to act as data gateways. They would even know which shippment is being sent to what customer...so they could easily target selectively. Already Chinese agents have attacked US government and commercial interests with serious data attacks (the Chinese LOVE espionage, especially commercial variety) - so giving them the final QC check on industrial and military routers and comms gear just doesn't seem smart, does it?

Well, maybe it does to you. I would say such things are part of strategic technologies, and should be carefully controlled.

@Frank Bough

Nope, not when I am a landscape photographer as a hobby, and often take my truck where you are too lazy and pantywaisted to ever get to. And considering I lived on the Yorkshire Moors (Meltham) when I had the Discovery, I can certainly show you a lot of landscape YOU couldn't even walk without breaking your little thin ankle, or ripping one of your painted fingernails. If you've seen the Top Gear when Clarkson takes a Disco up that mountain, well, mine has done similar.

The Freelander is just a compromise - now that I live in central London, the Disco is just too big to park easily. Otherwise I'd get another in a second. Or a Defender, 'cept my gf won't be seen dead in a Defender...

OK, answered my own question...more details here:

He bought the bubble technology from NASA, which abandoned it's Transhab plans. It has an integrated micromideorite protection in the form of 5 carbon/foam layers, which are equivalent to 12 cm of aluminum. Not too shabby.

More details here:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/nautilus.htm

But I'll tell you what is scary - the final sentances:

"Bigelow had several dozen subcontractors, often more than two on each subsystem, in order to reduce risk and identify the best and lowest cost solution through actual hardware evaluation rather than endless engineering study and paperwork. The entire development was kept very secret, and firm technical details were extremely scarce."

Wasn't that the way the Thunderbirds and their island base were built also???

@Martin Usher...

SS = DEATHTRAPS???

Hardly. You are frankly a pampered puss if you think that any exploratory vehicle that has a 130 launch record with only two losses is a deathtrap.

You want to see deathtraps? Go look at the survival statistics of the early 1400 - 1600 seafarers, around Columbus' time. Or even look later, into the 1700s - basically, they would have been THRILLED to only lose two out of a hundred ships at sea, even when it was "commercial", and not exploratory. The entire industry of insurance had to be invented by Lloyds of London, just to spread the risk of what was then the commercial, well-known business of shipping in the 1700s - because so many ships were being lost. Two in a hundred journys? Hah! They lost that many just getting clear of territorial waters...

Your comment just re-inforces the belief that our society has become overly comfortable, overly secure, and overly cautious...like a middle-class house cat who never strays from his porch. The shuttles are a fantastically successful vehicle, and they are one of a kind design. We will certainly miss it when we retire it. There is nothing else by anyone else that can do what it does. It is only because of pantywaists that we have not built an updated shuttle to the same design. "OHH, we might LOSE a few...better not build any more and improve them!!!" Everyone knows that evolutionary design is the way to minimize progressive risk - just ask the Russians with the Soyuz, whose basic design hasn't changed in 30+ years - but it's reliability has only increased.

And as for them being expensive, we could build a whole fleet of shuttles for what 6 moths of the war in Iraq costs...I think they were orignally a bit over a billion each, but we obviously have to inflate that to today's dollars.

But that's OK, feel free to believe that any exploration of the unknown that may risk life is too costly for you to consider, or that any vehicle that has some inherent risk is a "deathtrap". You probably drive a Volvo too...the only unfortunate thing is that people with opinions like yours have blunted the one edge we did have in space, a manned, re-usable heavy lift capability. Something that everyone else has tried to design, and has failed at, but which we are just giving up, because we lost two. I guess we should have put the brakes on Apollo when the first capsule burned on the pad and killed the entire crew too, huh? And I guess that guy Columbus really should have stayed at home...after all, he might lose a couple of ships (which he did).

@Jeff Dickey

I was going to write something, but Jeff wrote it all better. Very well said, Mr. Dickey...very well said.

R

@Nìall Tracey

Nice points you brougth up about the death of sailing ships being tied to their cargo loading.

However, where this idea falls down is that these modern cargo ships have no keel form at all, and are therefore unable to use the kite for much more than anything but dead downwind. On a traditional sailing vessel, there is some keel (even if it is not a full-on fin keel), that generates forward propulsion when on a reach.

If this idea proves workable, we will need a change in ship designs to give us back some element of keel form to allow a wider range of wind angles.

Robert

Tiscali is HORRENDOUS BB

Run, don't walk away from Tiscali. I have recently been migrated from Pipex to Tiscali, on the 8 Mbyte super-premium plan...and service has become abysimal. Want to watch a YouTube video? Er, get ready for pauses, glitches, and just unmade connections.

If I try to download ANYTHING, I can actually watch the sawtooth wave forms of the traffic shaping cutting in, routinely. On an 8Mb "unlimited" connection that I rarely download anything that large on.

Pipex was SOOO much better, I miss them. I may have to try BT soon enough...

Robert

@lamfanboy

You really have NO idea of what a "police state" is do you?

It is NOT a state where people obey the police (or even their impostures).

It IS where the police can be the ones setting the laws, determining guilt, and executing punishments - with no legal recourse.

Even as policed as the UK is, that is quite not the case, as recent payouts by the Met and UK governments for police transgressions have proven. In a true police state, the officers that shot Menezes wouldn't have even undergone an investigation. In fact, in a real police state his shooting never would have made it into the papers or TV newscasts, as the police would have detained all the media and confiscated all cameras.

In historical terms, both the US and the UK are remarkably free from police malfeasance...for proof, try visiting North Korea or Iran or even Russia right now and criticizing the police or government. Go ahead, and tell us about it when you get out of jail in 15 years...

Robert

@Anon Coward

I moved to the UK from the States almost three years ago, and I too couldn't see the value in a system that began life as a cut rate version of a voicecall.

Three years later, I am hooked. SMS is a great way to cut out "telephone tag", like an email, but is delivered to a device that almost everyone here has on their person constantly, so you know they will get it quickly - unlike an email.

It also generates a delivery reciept when it is delivered to the recipient's phone, something that rarely works on email.

Lots of times i will send a text to schedule a phone call, just to ensure the person will be free. Some people see that as polite.

And the other major fact about texts are that they are VERY constrained in terms of how much attention you will require from the recipient. They know when they look at a text that it will be brief, and they can do it when they choose. Answering a phone call they have neither of those - they have to answer it then or play phone tag, and they have no idea how long it will go. So in some ways, texts are just more polite, and take less time.

Texts don't replace phone calls - they just give another channel. One that is very different than either emails or voicecalls, and has it's own set of uses.

Robert