Posts by vincent himpe

Get this man a nobel prize !

this is the most ingenious thing i have ever seen in the last 10 years.

also the adaptor to put 3 of the folded plugs into an normal one, or share it with a ac to usb power control block is pure genius !!

It should be possible to pass safety standards if the ground pin is solid copper and the power and neutral pin are shrouded to only have the tip be copper.

The rotational part is no problem as it uses friction contacts. so there are no wires that need stretching or shortening.

the only weak spot would be the swivel itself. every time you pull the plug out the entire force lands on the swivel. ( inserting is no problem since the 'wings' spread the pressure over the rotating part.

i see we have new icons.

but isn;t it ime to take bill down and put steve in place ?

and where is the bullethole riddled pinguin icon ?

pointless

There is such a thing as on-demand. And it is avaialble in hd. And for a tenth of the price of a blu ray disc you watch the movie you want when you want.... Most movies you will watch only once anyway ... no point in having the disc.

physical storage is dead. streaming is the new thing.

he still SPEAKS ?

I thought that, by now, he would have mastered telepathic communication...

please don't eat horses !

otherwise we'd have a worldwide shortage of glue and dogfood !

That's the last thing you'd want : running out of glue. Think about it : no more post it notes !

what ?

so the tiny little stranded earphone wires can conduct 5 million amps of current when the field collapses ? I got some people here who want to talk about that ...

If it proves anything it is this : ipods take a way common sense from young people. Any kid older dan three knows they should not shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm , especially if that tree is the tallest object around. Ipods make people dumb(er)

patent idea

A keyboard with just one button,

The shift key selects between numbers or letters.

then there are the ALT keys. ( Alt1 tot ALT5 )

Depending on which alt keys you press you select a different letter.

hardware will be simpler : the 5 alt keys can be read directly. when the keypress comes : take binary number formed by altkeys and clock it in. done

Come on. can we please have a normal keyboard ? what is with all these crazy keyboard layouts ...

@lifelesspoet

that wouldnt; work eithe.r

if it's up to the oem , what will they install ? 9 to 1 that it'll be IE. simply because most people will not buy a computer if it doesn;t come with IE.

how many people that own a windows based computer have ever heard about opera ? how about firefox ? how about chrome ? how about ie ? ( note : i am not saying :using. i'm asking the question how many people have heard about... so you coudl place a cehckmark on multiple browsers.

if you then take the total number of computer owners and compare with the number of checkmarks for each browser i think it will look like this

IE : 100%

Firefox : 10%

Opera : 0.5%

Chrome 0.01 %

Safara 0.000001 %

anything else : approaches the reciproke of infinite

duh ..

that software is for usage in china only. there is no such thing as copyright law in china. besides. that stuff is open source right .. as in 'free'.. the chinese reasoning is: 'tank you vely mush'

Like the walker brothers sang ...

The sun ain't gonna boot anymore.

The data is now a disk in the cloud.

Oracle is now clouding your eyes.

When you're without sparc ...

@geoff McKenzie

And how many linux ( whatever distro ) users actually read the source code associated with the almost daily patches on that platform, and then decide when they weant to install ?

Whenever the 'there are updates avaialble' box pop up in lousey looser ( or whatver the name of the latests distro is these days. ) all the users click : install . Just like Windows or MAC or Solaris users do.

Okay maybe not all of them , but you will need a calacultor with a lot of decimal places to calculate the percentage of those who do actually go over every line of code , understand exactly what it does, and can make an informed decision wether to install or not , and if it will break any existing thing or add new security problems.

Irregardels of what os you you are running, an update cycle is a crapshoot. Hold my beer while i click this button , hang on to your butt and hope it works after the install is done.

I've sead it before and i'll say it again. Want security on your system ?: Apply hot glue to the network ports and use bolt cutters on the antennas of the wifi card.

I'd love to see them try to get into that machine remotely...

delicate disassembly ?

jutdging fro mt he picture that shows the innards they applied some serious force on the board.

I see at least two inductors that have their core broken ...

a..aha

ahaha AHAHAAA HAHAHAAAHAHAHA ( mad scientist cackling laugh )

The decision will be quickly made i guess...

At least on windows you can install some other things you use on the desktop ( provided they ar e not too heavy )

Android ? is there software for that thing yet ?

detail

it has to do with the fact that a Tivo box can be simultaneously recording and paying back a stream. I can be watching a pre-recorded stream from disk while recording a new stream. Or i can be watching at point x in a stream while the recording is already at point y ( so called timeshifting . let's pause it for a minute and then watch it from where it was halted.)

That is patented. Any box that has such timeshifting capability and record while playing back is subject to this patent. Several companies have licenced this technology. Echostart did not ....

@sampler

we are moving to a pay-per usage altogether. everytime you click something somehwere you here a -kaching-

software as a service.... you can run anything , but everytime you run it you pay... the next move is to actually make you pay per second you actually use the app ....

@dave

1) Ok , so then , give me an equivalent for Premiere and After Effects and Lightroom . As for some of the other software i mentioned... there is one equivalent for linux... you need to fork over 20 grand every year for a licence... the windows version is a fraction of that cost. the difference ; the linux version can run on a farm to speed up simulations, the windows version does not... i don't need the farm. a quad core is speedy enough for what i do.

2) nope. why should i. Just build a separate computer. I have a box running ubuntu (lamp), and two machines running XP (one for video and photo editing that has calibrated monitors) The hardware is cheap compared to the cost the invested time and projects. 300$ buys you a quad core + mobo +4 gig ram ,slap on 130 for XP oem licence and 160 more dollars gives you 3 terabyte of storage... Heck the videocamera costs 3x more than the computer and that is without the cost of the underwater house for it...

Besides : There is plenty of 299$ deals out there that buy you a modern machine to have a bit of fun. i got a couple of those i use to develop hardware, most of them have wires soldered to the motherboard so i can hook up a scope or logic analyser.

aha. the apple definition of 'free'

Its like a cell phone contract. get a free phone , but we nail you for 2 years at 80$ a month...

you get a cheap 99$ ipod but it costs you a grand , and you may still have to buy a bunch of software and install XP on it since schools require word and excel documents. And any other software you may need for school work is 99% of the cases windows -only ...

and why

does this automatically mean 'open source ? they could move to so many different platforms. Mac OSx anyone ? solaris anyone ? any big iron kit form IBM perhaps ?

ultimate protection :

Turn off wifi, snip off antennas', apply hot-glue to ethernet ports. I'd like to see them hack into that machine over the network...

Store array size in the array descriptor

and string size in string descriptor.

compiler can do size checking at compile time.

Visual Basic has been doing that for years.

wtf ? shouldn't that be a green screen ?

maybe its a screen with a turtleneck..

[submarine icon] because apple computers and their os are as useful as a screen door on a .. well you know ..

europe must be desperate for money...

I don't get it. If they don;t like microsoft and they don't like intel they should stop whining and come up with their own processors and operating system... oh wait they can't . because all the smart people leave europe ...

at that price

it should at least have had a color screen... come with wifi , bluetooth, provide voice narration , have removable memory and be able to display other documents like word documents, openoffice documents, pdf files , txt files and other stuff you could load onto it.

A netbook is cheaper and offers much more possibilites.

Besides, for 489 i can buy a lot of treeware ...

so

you will need one of those intel based cray boxes to run it smoothyl i guess..

i hope

that the analogy stops at the names... After all the space stuff consists of millions of parts slapped together. Each part made by the lowest bidder .... pray it doesn't blow up

duh

simply install that volvo automatic braking system. if it detects an obstacle it jams the brakes shut.

a similar system could be used. a simple passive infrared detector can scan for 'warm' objects such as people.

what is front and back ?

i had a hard time figuring out that it is two weels in front ,one in back... normally you show front views and not only back views ....

besides , it looks like you have to be a controtionist to get in and out of this thing.

I'd prefer to have the hoverchairs from the wall-e movie ...

@Ian Tunnacliffe

on your item number 4 : the question is what do you use ? do you use the operating system or do you use the applications ? And that is where apple is lacking seriously. Every year or so i walk into an apple store and have the same question, and every time i leave empty handed.

There is no serious software for Apple. Only this year is Adobe Premiere and Photoshop returning natively to Apple. Wanna run games ? install windows... Wanna run any other business software ? install windows. Wanna run any kind of serious cad software ( solidworks, rhino , 3dstudio , renderman, cadence , mentor , altium ) install windows. wanna run electronics or mechanical engineering tools ? run windows ....

Of all the software i use on a day to day basis only a webbrowser (Opera) and MS Office is available on Mac. And that is maybe 5% ... none of my CAD stuff runs on apple , none of my Photo or Video editing stuff runs on Apple. None of my code writing tools run on apple (cross compilers for ARM. Devtools for Altera and Xilinx)

So why would i buy overpriced kit to shell out another 299$ to install XP Pro on it ...

If my dad wants a computer to surf the internet and write the odd letter i will buy him a Mac.

If you want to do any serious workj.. tough luck. That does not mean they are bad machines or OSx is a bad operating system. Macs are simply limited in what you can do with them (without installing a different os, whete winduws , one of the 5 bajillion flavours of 'nerd'-ix).

If someone would make a Solaris laptop ...

i wan tan officesedate

when you get to work : put it onze, zone out and it wakes you when it is time to go home... now that would be selling like hotcakes !

if it looks like that

i'd buy it in a heartbeat. the slim looks of chrome,steel and the black backside.

time for apple to make something that looks like that , instead of their plasticy bubble gum droplet shaped stuff.

tsss. amateurs

everyone knows that the passwords are kept on a note in the dean's secretary's desk. last weeks password was 'pencil'

for a list of previous passwords go watch 'wargames' again...

zune is the absolute best !

its the only player i could rip apart , hardwire its fm transmitter and other things , hide it inside the car. and control it from the steering wheel. ( using the ir remote for its dock. try that with an ifruit)

linux missed the boat

of course it did. It's developers are still arguing what kind of boat it should be, whagt color they are going to paint it. how to control the helm from a command line and wheteher it will run kde or gnome or if it will come preloaded with vi or emacs.

As usual it has become a twit race. As long as the linux communicty can not pull together and make 1 system that supports all possible hardware the ship will never sail.

yay !

more gnome vs kde , vi vs emacs wars and more colour scmee s to choose from.

just what we need.

Maybe if they would apply it to the study at hand

I remeber from my schooldays. I hated math (i still do. if it can't be done using + - * / and the odd root or squre and a couple of logs, it isn't worth doing. period.)

When i asked the teacher to give me aprtical example of some theorem. he started to explain it could be used to find the exact points to bend a metal plate to create a gutter with the maximum water throughput... i replied : i am studying electronics, i am not in metalshop 101..... and that was it. The teacher pulled a complete blank... he could not find an application in my field of interest.

That is the main problem. Teach maths as they are applicable to a field of study. and if that field of study happens to be mathematics you can pull all stops out.

can we have some real usefull stuff too ?

Like beaming of contacts and files over bluetooth like any other 5 year old smartphone can do ?

Mounting as external drive ? (try convinvg the companies it department you need itunes on your business dektop/laptop. Njet !

Have normal mini usb connector ? so i don;t need to carry yet another cable...

Be able to run real gps software like tomtom so it would work in place where there is no cell phone coverage ? like when you need it most ?

and would it be too much to ask for stereo audio on bluetooth. Come on. Worlds best music player can only do mono ? duh !

the russians need a new photocamera

costco has an 8 megapixel on sale for 129 right now.

these pictures from soyouz launches are invariably grainy...

sack em all

that's what i'd do. Bunch of no good - we strike because we are french- tossers

@ross riles. Tomtom is a DUTCH company and thus SMART

They are -cheap-. Linux is free ( as in zero paid ) It doesn't come more free than that.

The end goal of Tomtom , just as any other company, is to make money for their stockholders. Anything else is irrelevant.

I take this free thing here , wrap it in a plastic bag and people pay me 5 bucks.... i call that easy money.

For years you could buy cd roms with the tucows collection on them. Anything on tucows could be downloaded for free. yet people still bought those cd's ...

Why' don't companies just pay for bug reports

Organise a contest like this every day. The first exploitable flaw of the day gets 100K.

You'll habe hackers racing to be first !.

After a few weeks the exploits will al be known. for a coupl of million dollars all your codebase is fixed.

You can;t beat that !

all you need is a gluegun

find the ethernet port on your machine and squirt hot glue in there.

if your machine has wifi : cut off the antenna too.

voila you are now perfectly safe.

wow

200 dollar for a licence to run applications. And 7000 on mainframe. And here i was think open sores stuff was free.

Luckily a windows oem install licence is only 99$....

[penguin with horns and dollar signs in its eyes icon]