Posts by Christian Berger

In Germany we had LED television sets since the 1990s

But we called them Fernsehbildmaschine, obviously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7T1TY6HbLQ

However getting blue LEDs was hard back then.

VLANs and security

Essentially it boils down to having access to the tagged frames or not. If you set the port to only have access to one VLAN it's secure, otherwise it's just a very small hurdle for malware.

56k was _never_ fast

Back when 56k was out ISDN which had multiples of 64k was already out and in widespread use. In fact if your "office" wasn't able to get you ISDN, 56k would neither work. So essentially it was a "supposed to be internet"-box which couldn't connect to the internet without an external ISDN router. Those were really expensive back then. But I guess it didn't matter, as the keyboard didn't have an @ key.

What I personally consider the best design of that time was the iBook. It had a shock absorbant case. The only think it lacks was a VGA output. If it had one, and the CD-Rom drive would have been any better, I'd probably still use it.

$30 is not cheap!

$30 is not cheap for a piece of plastic with some parallel lines printed on it. You can probably do it with most good laser printers.

Hand it to Alan Kay please!

Now once someone finds a way to "draw programs" effectively, this could start a new computer revolution. Unfortunately it's very unlikely they have a smart enough person working there.

So please hand that device to Alan Kay and let him find out ways to turn it into something useful.

25 years? I don't think so

The Windows were known in Germany 38 years ago, just look at the TV appearances from back then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-gEda0FwYs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhUgtdgeQ5Q&feature=related

Wont this break most PDF applications?

I mean if a PDF file cannot change registry settings it'll have to be rewritten to use the new method of doing so. This will cause lots of old unsupported PDF applications to break.

Will the OS even matter for most people?

I mean in a few year, we'll be able to run complex applications in the browser, possibly even with regulated access to the local hardware.

My guess is, that in the end it'll end like in the desktop computer days, one operating system for people who don't care (Windows=>Android), one for people who want to be "Apple" (MacOSX=>iOS) and one for people who actually want to get some work done (Linux/*BSD/Unix=>Maemo/MeeGo).

And of course there will always be the fringe markets like the Amiga market today which will probably translate to Windows Phone. Both are essentially limited purpose machines (Amiga: video processing, games; Windows Phone: Outlook synchonisation) which got overtaken by cheaper and more versatile platforms, even though a few die hard fans still stick to it.

Just a matter of time

In Germany you can already buy the first sub 20 Eur FM-radios with _digital_ IF processing. The next generation of those chips will probably be able to do DAB, too.

I don't think quality is much of an issue. You can get most radio stations in superb quality over satellite and even cable (both unencrypted of course). Public radio stations use bitrates between 128 kBit/s for voice-only stations, over 320 kBit/s for music orientated programming up to I think about a megabit for surround sound stations, but those are rare. So there is little need for the quality enthusiast to use FM.

This machine was on the edge...

This machine was on the edge towards general purpose computing as we know it today. For example while newer machines used a fraction of their RAM to refresh the display, the Apple 1 used a set of dedicated shift registers for that. It also had dedicated character generator ICs instead of PROMS.

It's very specific

So someone who needs the computing power of a small ARM-based device previously running a server farm. That's hardly a hard case for consumption reduction.

However it's a nice run down of what one can do in certain conditions. :)

One thing missing: Server Sockets

My guess is that with Server Sockets and IPv6 the whole "application in a browser" thing will finally take off.

That's nothing

There still is a remote code execution bug in IE since the mid 1990s. You can make the browser execute ActiveX applets.

Now we only need peer-to-peer communications

And Skype will finally die.

What plattforms will it be availiable for?

Well there surely won't be a Linux or *BSD version of it around, but what about Windows?

Will it run on normal Windows (i.e. 2000, 9x)? I doubt many business users will be able to upgrade to XP OR Vista.

Considering the fuzz

Considering all the fuzz they made about it, it's next to nothing. It's just about 3% of the households and everybody knew about it.

In contrast, the pirates party got 2% at the last national elections and next to nobody knew them.

There's no such thing as the "SNR" of an antenna

What there is is the noise figure of the amplifier, and the gain of the antenna itself. There is no SNR as such as it depends on the strength of the signal.

Never buy consumer

I'm sorry, but this is a consumer notebook. Those typically are over-priced and under value. For example the display is shiny which is against regulations in the field of ergonomics.

If you want to buy decent laptops, you need to buy business. It's cheaper and you get better quality.

For the non UK readers

The figure on the teaser picture is "Postman Pat", a figure of the local mythology. He is said to deliver mail in exchange for worshiping him with little piece of paper called "stamps".

The name seems to immediately suggest involvement in the postal service. However that can be ruled out as one of the insignia he is usually depicted with is a "bright red van". Of course as we all know postal vehicles are yellow, not red, so this is ruled out.

Well but with IPv6

With IPv6 we will have a lot less route fragmentation.

Trivially possible with existing equipment

Just scale down the side-by-side image so the distance between both images is smaller than the distance of your eyes. Then just stare into the distance until those images overlap. There you go, there's the 3D image. No glasses, no special TV.

Can be bought cheaper

Just look at your local hardware store, they probably have way cheaper mirrors there.

Other than that, what's the use of a reflecting screen? You will constantly be irritated by reflections from bright objects in your background. What will be next, transparent screens?

In a way this was _far_ more advanced than the iPhone/iPad

Back then, they actually thought about making a pen-based users interface. For example as far as I have seen, you could just write a name anywhere and select it to get the address of the person behind it. It actually tried to do more with the computer than just emulating physical devices.

Reminds me of the Telefunken TED

Back in 1975 Telefunken cranked up the record player to 21 by offering a mechanically scanning video disk system. It was able to record 10 minutes of video on an ultra fine groove.

This is not much different. It's a harddisk recorder with a disk far to small to be usefull for anything and they try to compensate that by adding the weirdest thing, a Blu-Ray recorder.

It would be so simple

1. Release open source graphics drivers: This will finally allow AMD into the professional market.

2. Sue VIA for having made horribly bad chip sets which don't work and start some kind of certification programme.

3. Build your own motherboards with on-board graphics.

Why can't you use standard DVB EPG?

In Germany, for example, every station transmits a standard EPG which is defined in the DVB standard. It's free to use by everybody building a DVB reciever so you just have EPG without having to pay.

Why on earth did you have to re-invent the system to make it incompatible?

(BTW I have a VDR based solution which has a special plugin to also do Freesat EPG, so as an access control system it's kinda pointless)

Problem: _nobody_ understands tablets

I mean what we get today are just weird little movie players. However that's just waste of potential. The companies lack a vision of the future. They don't see computers for what they really are, universal data processors. That's why those user interfaces do nothing more than replicating the interface of appliances from the past.

My vision is like this. I have something which at first appears like a piece of paper, a "notebook" in it's conventional sense if you will. If I use a pen or perhaps my finger, on it:will behave like any normal piece of paper. However if it recognices certain commands it will interpret them and apply them to the data I wrote there. So it's in a way, a graphic shell.

Developments come in waves

No, the personal computer will not die, nor will the web die. Such things always happen in waves. I assume the next "big thing" will be "peer to peer", where you provide services like flickr on a network of distributed nodes.

Adding this to a product tells the customer...

...that you think he's an idiot unable to put in batteries in the right way and you even spend probably considerable amounts of money on telling him.

Finally something decent

I'm sorry, but I have tried HDMI, it just won't work. I have a connection of a mere 10 meters, but I already need a repeater, and even then I cannot do 1080p. It's really a shame.

I can understand the engineers beeing not motivated

After all you are supposed to build a product which is already doomed by management decisions like DRM. For most engineers it doesn't matter if the cellular phone connection works or not as they cannot run their own software, they don't have a shell on it. For them it's _far_ from beeing as good as it could be.

Apple has lost it's appeal for engineers back when they ditched the PPC plattform and it has only gotten downhill from there.

@So much for Apple Apps: The Excel part is there to filter out engineers who still care about what they do. If you see an engineer use Excel for something which has more cells than fit on the screen, he's mostly dead inside or cringing innerly with pain.

Most important question

does it have apt-get?

< 30MHz the only usable radio range for broadcasting

Unfortunately higher frequencies are absolutely unsuitable for broadcasting as the signal doesn't follow the earths curvature. Just look at the VHF-Bands for example:

They only work sporadically for short amounts of time.

Here's one of the videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7CB7qTU5Y

The transmitter was in Iran, the reciever in the netherlands, yet the quality is bad.

Is that a commercial in the EPG?

I'm sorry, but is that a commercial in the EPG? That just seems just absurd.

Input devices

It's great for input devices like keyboards and mice. Non-Bluetooth wireless keyboards tend to loose keystrokes which often makes them unusable.

Plus Bluetooth, unlike USB for example, is supported by Windows to some extend. As far as I know you can just pair a wireless serial port with Windows and it will work.

I still don't get it

Why should I pay to get my data routed through a mobile operator? I mean after all I could just set up WLAN and use my internet connection directly.

Finally

Finally a homogenous landscape with lots of _really_ bad code. It's just a matter of time till the first AV worms spread by using bugs in the AV software.

Just like a book is useless without the ability to read....

a computer is fairly useless to someone unable to program. You need to teach people how to do more with their computers than watching porn.

I remimber when Microsoft did an ad campaign against Linux

Back then they campaigned against Linux, claiming all those distributions are far to fragmented to be a single platform.

Well let's see where Microsoft is now. They have Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 on the desktop OS side. All three are in widespread use today and not all applications run on all three at once. Then there's Windows CE and Windows Mobile, as well as Windows Phone. All in various versions and all incompatible to eachother. You cannot run a Windows Phone application on Windows CE or Windows 7.

Now let's look at the Linux side of things. I have Ubuntu desktops and laptops, I have several different kinds of routers and even satellite receivers running Linux. I have the same shell on all of these. I can write shell scripts which will run on all of them without any modification. In fact I can even run the same applications on those devices. For example vi runs on all of them. Just try to run "Pocket Word" on a Windows 7 machine natively.

C5 mobile phone

Siemens once had a C5 mobile phone. http://www.oebl.de/C-Netz/Geraete/Siemens/C5/C5.html

What's that slid in the front?

What's that slid in the front? It seems to be to wide for an SD-card. And it cannot possibly be a 5 1/2 inch diskette drive. It might be one of those CD-Rom drives which were popular in eht 1990s, but that would seriously be very retro.

2 points

First of all if they don't want to go digital, they should have stayed analog and used HD-Mac insteadt of DVB.

Second, the more they try to controll their content, the more likely it is for this content to appear on Bittorrent.

Main Problem: Software distribution

To own a Linux box you need to create some malicious flash applet by using an exploit which will only be usable for a few weeks at most. Then you need to spread that flash applet.

To own a Windows box, you just need to send someone an e-mail with an attachment called greeting-card.exe and they will execute it.

The big point is, that dangerous things are harder to do on Linux, while at the same time more simple and more secure alternatives are offered. Using a package manager is far easier than executing a downloaded file.

Far to early

It's far to early for that. What's missing right now is concepts on how to actually do stuff on tablets.