* Posts by Steve Todd

2644 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

Steve Todd

Re: MBA - Apple flash ripoff

Erm, Apple do not now, nor have they ever made a 22" Cinema Display. They DID make 20, 23, 24 and 30" models. The current one is 27", but includes a bunch of Thunderbolt stuff. Result: your 22" Samsung could not have used the same panel and doesn't provide the same functions as (the admittedly more expensive) Apple display.

Interwebs taunt Sir Jony over Apple eye candy makeover

Steve Todd

There seems to be confusion

Over the difference between designing icons and designing how a UI works. As iOS 7 is still beta then I expect that things like icons are still subject to change (which is the easy job). How the UI works seems to be rather less well considered by the likes of Mr Orlowski. I'm going to hold off commenting on it until I've actually had chance to use it and decide for myself whether or not it's a step in the right direction.

Online music world on iRadio: Apple, imagine our concern

Steve Todd

Re: Spotify for iPhone

Spotify Premium cost £10/month (without which you can't use it on a mobile device). iTunes Match costs £22/year, or pay nothing and put up with adverts. There are going to be a lot of people dumping Spotify over this one.

The fearful price of 4G data coverage: NO TELLY for 90,000 Brits

Steve Todd
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Re: will have to take care of themselves

Yes, mobile does need 800 MHz. We still don't have full 3G coverage because of the cost and number of base stations needed at 2.1 GHz, never mind the new 2.6 GHz band for 4G. They've cheated a little in Scotland and provided some limited 3G on the 2G 900 MHz band.

At 800 MHz with current LTE systems we should be able to get 20-40 Mbit/sec out of each of the allocated frequency blocks, which is FAR better than the limited 2G data network that otherwise covers rural areas.

Steve Todd
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Re: Do you know ANYTHING about digital broadcast technology?

Yes, we all know that rural people can't receive digital TV signals and wind turbine blades are made from metal, not non radio-reflecting carbon fibre. That and the entire countryside is littered with turbines. Or maybe not.

Steve Todd

Re: Do you know ANYTHING about digital broadcast technology?

Don't know what happened here, that comment should have been attached to the original post.

Steve Todd
FAIL

Do you know ANYTHING about digital broadcast technology?

Network performance is not down to frequency, rather to bandwidth. Not just that either, the coding scheme and transmission method are also a factor. The result is that 4G @800 MHz will be every bit as fast as 4G @ 2.6 GHz for a given sized block of bandwidth. The 2.6 GHz signals don't propagate as far so are better for tightly packed urban areas where you want many base stations to service the number of users. The 800 MHz band will give better coverage in rural areas. BOTH of these bands were auctioned off in case you didn't notice.

Thirty-five years ago today: Space Invaders conquer the Earth

Steve Todd

Disney Quest in Orlando, Florida is full of them

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/destinations/downtown-disney/entertainment/disney-quest-indoor-interactive-theme-park/

Free to play once you have paid to get in.

Can lightning strike twice? Intel has another crack at Thunderbolt

Steve Todd

Re: Why are they fighting USB3?

They're not, it's just el regs journos don't understand that. Thunderbolt is more like ESATA, it's a way of moving PCIe ports out of the case by piggybacking on the video cable. I don't see them complaining that ESATA is less popular than USB3 either.

Intel: Haswell is biggest 'generational leap' we have EVER DONE

Steve Todd
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Re: How about "Haswell" on LGA 1156 instead of another new socket?

The new CPU moves voltage regulation on chip as part of its drive towards lower power and less support components. You'd pretty much HAVE to have a new socket if you do that.

Steve Todd

Re: Double the power of existing Intel graphics

I think you'll find that the comparison was made against AMD integrated graphics, which are substantially quicker (even though the CPU is less powerful).

Ecuador: Let's talk about not having Julian Assange on our sofa

Steve Todd

Re: A lotta donuts

You need to work on your math a little (£30k becomes £50k by the time you have paid for taxes, office space, pensions etc, and they only work 240 days per year in 8 hour shifts) but I still make that 13 officers on duty 24x7.

Apple declares WAR on Spotify: iRadio bags streaming rights

Steve Todd

Re: Please make it cheaper than Spotify

@jason 7 - not if you want to use it on a mobile device it isn't, more like £9.95

Elon Musk pledges transcontinental car juicers by end of year

Steve Todd
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Re: Musk obviously has staff to pay his bills and thus never actually sees them ...

@YARR - tell you what, run your car engine for a while, then open the radiator cap. If you still have your eyebrows (or face) left then try telling us again that they don't produce much waste heat. You can finish off by holding the exhaust pipe if you like.

Steve Todd
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Re: Musk obviously has staff to pay his bills and thus never actually sees them ...

@naughtyhorse - you're not getting any better or any brighter.

It doesn't matter when you run out of power, only that MOST cars recharge off peak. There's no need to wait in the unlikely event that you need a mid-day recharge.

DC power systems have been getting progressively cheaper and smaller scale. The latest models are all solid state and are economical over distances of 10's of kilometres. Go look up HVDC Light and HVDC PLUS.

If feeding power back into the grid will doom us then we're already doomed. As others (and myself) have already pointed out FIT systems (like PV) are already doing this. You've also totally failed to explain WHY this will doom us.

Steve Todd
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Half that number

The Roadster battery cost $36,000 today and has a projected 7 year life span, so if nothing changes and you stick that money under your mattress (rather than somewhere that pays interest) that's a tad over $5k per year. You can however pretty much guarantee that in 7 years time there will be cheaper replacements. You also need to remember that your petrol car needs replacement parts (of which it has many more, and needs more servicing) and depreciates also.

I've no idea where you got that second number from.

Steve Todd
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Re: Musk obviously has staff to pay his bills and thus never actually sees them ...

@YARR - no it isn't

IC engines run at about 30% efficiency. A fixed power plant burning the same fuel can run at better than 80% efficiency. Even allowing for charging and transmissions losses then you come out in front by using electric power. Also you remove the problem of emissions in urban areas, which are a significant problem.

Steve Todd
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Re: Musk obviously has staff to pay his bills and thus never actually sees them ...

@Naughtyhorse - you seem to be majoring in stupid yourself, and providing no evidence to the contrary. The difference in power draw between peak and off peak is well documented at over 50,000MWh, using 1/3rd of that for 8 hours per day (overnight, off peak) would be enough to drive over 30% of the cars in the country.

DC power lines have been in use since the 1930's when the Swedes worked out how to do what Edison couldn't. There's nothing new or magical about them, we use them to transfer power between France and the UK, and between the UK and Ireland.

Feeding power back in to the grid is also a well known technology, it is used by owners of PV panels for example. The idea of EV drivers setting an amount of power they can afford to return to the grid and getting a higher rate for that is far from fanciful.

Steve Todd
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Re: This guy

MOST of SpaceX's funding has come from NASA progress payments. They have a $1.6Bn contract to supply the International Space Station, and a proven method of fulfilling that. As for the launch contracts, they have taken DEPOSITS, not full payments so they can still cover their costs when they have to provide the promised launches. Their management doesn't seem to have done a bad job here.

As for aircraft maintenance and parts, I guess you've never had anything to do with the aviation industry. Mechanics have to be certified by the FAA and all parts have to be built to standard, be traceable and identifiable. The result is that maintenance is anything BUT cheap and done by Chinese workers.

Steve Todd
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Many oil companies went bust in the early days

It doesn't mean that it's a bad idea, just that business model and volumes of scale aren't right at the moment.

Steve Todd
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So public charging points are entirely mythical

And it's not possible to install charging points on the street? Think more about how something could be done rather than why you personally can't do something this instant.

Steve Todd
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Re: Musk obviously has staff to pay his bills and thus never actually sees them ...

The more important question is what are you smoking?

At current prices electricity is significantly cheaper per mile than petrol. There is also substantial over capacity during off-peak periods (which is why it is offered cheaper then). The result is that EV charging can be used to smooth out peaks and troughs in demand (EVs can also feed power back to the grid at peak demand, gaining their owners cash).

Next the idea that the grid can't cope, nor that it can't be upgraded. Both are utter nonsense. There won't be a Big Bang conversion here, petrol will be around for a long time to come, and there is currently enough capacity for a significant percentage of vehicles to be electric powered. It will take many years for the current grid to be unable to handle any more EVs, and it can be upgraded perfectly well, not by boosting voltage but by adding more lines. There's also the possibility with the new lines to shift to DC transmission which results in less power loss.

Living with a 41-megapixel 808 PureView: Symbian's heroic last stand

Steve Todd

Re: And why are Samsung setting up a Finnish R&D centre?

The problem is that Symbian just isn't well suited to a UI which demands fast and fluid updates. Add to that multiple departments inside of Nokia all pulling in different directions over the platform and tools. Whatever Elop did he wasn't going to get a polished, competitive version of Symbian in time to compete with iOS and Android.

You can argue over the decision to go to Windows Phone, but dumping Symbian was a forgone conclusion.

Hot new battery technologies need a cooling off period

Steve Todd

Re: The battery is only one part of the problem - @Trygve Henrksen

Nice of you to bring up the 3008, no it doesn't give those numbers in real life. See http://cars.uk.msn.com/features/real-world-mpg-the-biggest-car-fuel-economy-losers?page=5

Steve Todd

Re: The battery is only one part of the problem - @Trygve Henrksen

The current generation, piece of crap designs are using about 300Wh/mile. Models built from the ground up as electric are down at around 180Wh/mile. Either way, even allowing for a certain amount of internal self discharge (which you can easily top off from domestic power, in which case you could go for months between needing a visit to a refuelling station) they are way more efficient than IC engines (even current hybrids are up at about 750Wh/mile in terms of the energy in the petrol that they consume).

The point for comparison was how much battery capacity an electric would need to drag about and how much it would need to charge in order to match a theoretical 40 litre tank of petrol. The answer is that the amounts are't unmanageable as was being claimed.

Steve Todd
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Re: @ Terry Barnes et al - still not getting it

It's not YOUR battery, you haven't bought it. You are renting it, plus paying for the amount of power you load in to it. You don't care if it brand new or 5 years old, only that it stores the amount of power that you paid for. You go into the filling station and select, for example, high capacity, regular or economy batteries (where economy are getting towards the end of their life - think more like 10 years for this - and don't store as much charge). Providing you know how much power the battery holds and have only paid for that what do you care?

You honestly think that (a) petrol isn't dangerous if allowed to slop about in the open by it's self and (b) electric charging stations aren't carefully insulated and loaded down with safety devices? Pull the other one.

Steve Todd
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Re: Battery swapping also has problems

Firstly it seems you don't understand the Calor Gas model at all. You don't buy the battery, you pay a refundable deposit to use it, plus the cost of the energy for the charge. You care not a jot who had the battery before you, what condition it is in etc, only how much energy it has stored.

Secondly the demand for fuel station provided power is much reduced as you can top up at home or in public car parks. You still need significant power feeds to these stations, but they draw off peak power for their charging. Why on earth would you want to physically ship the batteries about when we have a perfectly good way of delivering electric power to wherever we want?

Steve Todd

Re: The battery is only one part of the problem - @G R Goslin

Other than the fact that electric cars can get similar ranges as 40 litres of petrol in a conventional car using only 50-60KWh (those IC engines are woefully inefficient at converting energy to drive) you're still ignoring the options of battery exchange and street charging points (there are already public charging points available). In the unlikely event you've run a 50KWh battery pack near empty a domestic 240 volt, 30 amp ring main circuit could recharge it in about 7-8 hours. Industrial grade 440 volt, three phase power can improve significantly on that.

Yahoo! ready! to! fling! $600m! at! Hulu!

Steve Todd
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I'm not a Yahoo fan

But sticking an exclamation mark after every word in a Yahoo headline is getting more than a little tiresome. Time to find a new joke now that el Reg has flogged this one to death?

World's richest hobo (Apple) has worked 'tax-free' in Ireland since '80s

Steve Todd
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Re: Easy answer then

Can you say "straw man argument"? Other than the completely hypothetical premis, the argument that working out a legal way the government less tax is as bad as a sexual assault is utterly rediculous.

Irish deputy PM: You want more tax from Apple? Your problem, not ours

Steve Todd
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Re: What kind of screaming right wing loon are you?

That is rather the way the Irish are likely to feel if you invade them, rather than the Americans (who were British subjects at the time and had no way of controlling tax rates) taxing too little.

Steve Todd
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What kind of screaming right wing loon are you?

Problem: we're not raising quite as much tax as we'd like

Solution: Declare war on a neighbouring country?

You'd have to be absolutely barking mad to even contemplate that. Ignoring for a moment the cost in international relations, it would cost us vastly more in military resources, restart a republican terror campaign and the Irish are broke anyway.

Massive EXPLOSION visible to naked eye SEEN ON MOON

Steve Todd
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Re: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Have an upvote for the RAH reference

MIT takes battery-powered robot cheetah for a gallop

Steve Todd
WTF?

Re: Their power measurements

Are you including the amount of energy required to grow the creatures that a real cat eats to provide its energy? I think you'll find that, compared to the original energy input (sunlight), the output energy is tiny.

Senators: You - Cook. Apple guy. Get in here and bring your tax books

Steve Todd
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Re: Probably because - @bluenose

In the US a board of directors has two main legal responsibilities - a Duty of Care and a Duty of Loyalty. While they can get away under the Duty of Care with business decisions that work out badly (depending on how badly, and how ill-informed they were when they made them) its pretty easy to argue that a reasonable person (which is the legal test) wouldn't pay more tax than they had to, which would leave the board liable.

You also seem to have failed to spot that the Apple board first voted to restart paying dividends over two years ago, following which their share price climbed hugely, even though it has since fallen back somewhat (you'd still be ahead if you purchased back then).

Conversely maximising share price in the short term, to increase the value of the board members personal holdings, is a breach of the Duty of Loyalty. Generally the reason for a board working to keep the share price up is to prevent the company being bought out for less than its asset value (and they have extra duties in the case of the sale of the company), which is both bad for shareholders and likely to have them looking for a new job.

Steve Todd

Probably because

They'd get sued by shareholders if they didn't. All companies have a legal duty to shareholders to maximise income. The big companies all employ accountants to work out how to minimise their expenses (tax being one) and maximise their income because of this.

As soon as governments change the law to make this sort of thing illegal then they'll pay the extra tax. Until then they will continue to use all and every legal ways to reduce their tax bill, and there's no point in politicians moaning about it as their ilk were responsible for setting up the rules the companies are working to.

Android is a mess and needs sprucing up, admits chief

Steve Todd

Re: "Android today is like Microsoft's Windows 3.1"

The reason that any or all of these formats fail is software. If you can't get the software (be it movies for VHS or applications for Windows) then you won't buy the hardware/system. Microsoft put a lot of effort into engaging developers for Windows 3.1 and made it cheap to do. VHS worked simply by numbers. Tape rental companies stocked more VHS tapes (because these were more VHS machines) and it spiralled.

What will make or break these mobile operating systems is just the same, the size and quality of the catalog of available software.

Apple adds Galaxy S 4 to Samsung patent suit

Steve Todd
Stop

Apple didn't ask for triple damages (they asked for roughly an extra 30% based on a jury finding of bad faith, triple is the statutory maximum only awarded in extreme circumstances) nor did the judge "trim" the amount awarded. What happened in that case was the amount was referred back to jury trial for decision on the correct amount, there being some confusion over the original calculation. The result may be anything from zero to much more than the original award, depending on how the new jury feel.

Intel Centerton server-class Atoms: How low can you go?

Steve Todd

Have I missed the part

Where the idle power was stated? There's plenty of talk about average and peak power, but I can't see that number.

Who is Samsung trying to kid? There will NEVER be a 5G network

Steve Todd
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Does LTE on the 1800MHz band not count as 4G?

EE will be upset to find that out.

Bill & Jobs' excellent adventure: Steve's tech looked better than mine

Steve Todd

Re: Inherent Flaw

But if you insist on having one then Bluetooth keyboards will pair and work quite happily with them. It's not an insurmountable hurdle.

Tesla earns first profit, Model S wins '99% perfect' rating

Steve Todd
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Not even close

1) Coal stations made up only 37% of US power last year (source http://phys.org/news/2013-04-coal-power-energy.html ) and has been falling.

2) Diesel is still toxic, even if it's a little harder to light (and yes, it still can be a fire risk). Even with the filters in place diesel engines emit more nitrogen oxides, which are bad for public health. No-one said that lithium batteries were entirely safe (ANY method of storing large amounts of energy is dangerous), just it's no more dangerous than using fossil fuels as you seem to be claiming.

Steve Todd

Re: lost almost all respect for consumer reports

Assuming that he WAS talking about LPG (which certainly isn't ethane) you still have the same problems of using an IC engine (30% efficiency if you're lucky, compared to 80%+ from a modern power station, nitrogen oxides as by products of the combustion, the need for oil lubricants etc.) combined with a limited refuelling infrastructure. You could equally well have used the same fuel at a power station, where you can get more bang for your buck AND mitigate any emissions problems in ways that mobile IC engines can't. Gas fired power compared to coal is a factor in favour of EVs.

Steve Todd
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Re: lost almost all respect for consumer reports

@TheVogon - do you do ANY research before you come up with this $h*t? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, including scholarly reports that say that unless you get your power mostly or totally from coal then EVs are a better solution.

Steve Todd
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Re: Bah

1) The US has only got coal power stations hasn't it? People should know better before trotting out this argument.

2) The lithium cells that Tesla use aren't toxic, and they are recyclable. Meanwhile the petroleum spirit (or gas as you yanks call it) that your car runs on is toxic and a fire risk. Stop kidding your self on this one.

Stroke my sexy see-through backside, says Jobs from BEYOND THE GRAVE

Steve Todd
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A method

Patents are about *A* method to do something, not all methods. Prior art only comes into play if it used the same or substantially similar methods. Buttons that are only visible when you use them on other devices use this method do they? As far as I know drilling VERY small holes in metal by laser for light to show through is an Apple invention already. This is building on that by detecting pressure by changing of capacitance due to flexing the metal.

Why are scribes crying just 'cos Google copied their books? asks judge

Steve Todd
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Do these guys not understand copyright?

The state grants authors the right to decide who has the right to copy their works. They can licence that right to publishers and make money. Google is copying their works without permission. They MAY get more exposure on the web, but where's the extra income comming from and who gave Google the license?

Over ONE-THIRD of PCs will have SSDs in 2017 - analyst

Steve Todd
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Re: SSDs, I believe, have now overtaken memory as the single most cost-effective upgrade

Kind of depends on what you do with a local hard drive. If its your one and only disk, where you keep all of your media files then SSDs get expensive for models large enough for the job. If however you use network storage for this kind of thing then you don't need a huge local disk, 128GB is plenty for most stuff. The SSD doesn't just improve boot times, it dramatically improves app start times, paging speeds and handling of temp files. Don't knock it until you try one.

Retro-tech fan seeks cash for Commodore 64 clones

Steve Todd

The magic word is

FPGA. You can implement a 6502, VIC chip, SID etc in hardware, not by software emulation. You can also reprogram it to be different machines. Take a look at the MCC 216 as an example, you can load it up with anything between a VCS2600 and an Amiga.

The $75 price point does however seem to have been pulled from his arse and it looks pretty much like a scam.

Peak Apple: Foxconn contemplating life after Cupertino

Steve Todd
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Lets add a little sanity

Apple sales for last quarter were actually up. They sold more, cheaper devices, at a lower margin hence the drop in profits. Oddly enough the comentards here abouts have been screaming about how they should sell cheaper devices. You got what you wished for, why are you suprised?

Apple only form about 35% of Foxconn's sales, so even if their sales to Apple fell by the same percentage as Apple's headline profits (unlikely, cheaper devices tend to cost not much less to assemble) then that's less than a 10% reduction due to Apple. Sales must therefore be down across their whole client base.