Posts by Steven Gray

Great article

I had an Archimedes around 1987 - specifically an A3000, and it's power became apparent running some simple Mandelbrot fractal code in BBC Basic. I had the original code from some magazine listing and had applied it to my A3000s predecessor, a Sinclair QL.

The QLs SuperBasic was as wonderful as it was slow – the Mandelbot set took 24hrs to draw. Even compiled from Pascal code, it still took 8 hours.

The Archimedes? 45 of your earth minutes. Astounding.

Kudos

for watching The City of Lost Children.

Pfft

We're on a *new build* estate on the outskirts of Glasgow, 10 mins drive from the city centre, where the phone system and ergo the broadband has been tacked on to an ancient exchange miles away. There is no cable provision so far.

Not only does this mean that BT could only muster .5mb over their 50 year old copper, the voice call quality alone would have had Alexander Graham Bell himself checking his equipment.

So we, er, 'upgraded' to TalkTalk, and with the addition of an iPlate (ironically, from the BT shop), we have hit the heady heights of 1.6mb on average.

Which is just about sufficient for iPlayer.

Fingertips

Over the years, I've seen a number of mouse newbies that grip the little critter like their life depended on it, then use their entire forearm to move it, and henceforth finding it difficult to get the tip of the pointer /exactly/ in the desired focus 'zone'.

Much better to rest the heel of your hand on the mousing surface and let your fingers do the fine manipulation. Often, all that's required is a tweaking of the tracking speed to get the forearm/fingers balance right.

I'll be visiting my local Apple store this weekend to see if that technique, er, bears fruit.

PS. At work I've been using an original MS Wireless Intellimouse Explorer for years - the size of a Veedub but great nonetheless.

@ONLY AVAILABLE TO BT TOTAL BROADBAND CUSTOMERS

Er, I just got mine from www.shop.bt.com and we're on TalkTalk. £7.07 postage free. Just search for i-plate.

We live in a new estate (4 years and still under construction) 10mins drive from Glasgow city centre. Lack of planning re broadband is astounding. As it happens, we're tacked onto the end of a very long line 3.5km from the exchange as the crow flies, God knows how much copper is involved. Speeds with our previous ISP maxed out at 512kbps - TalkTalks exchange equipment helped boost this to 800kbps.

I fitted the I-Plate this morning. Now we're up to 1.4mbps. Those with much faster BB may scoff, but this is pretty amazing. Thanks to El-Reg for the heads up too...

Wait a minute...

This could be quite alarming if the dark spot turned out to be made of thousands of black monoliths...

@Ancient Oracle funkie

"I remember the original iPod (yes, I am that old). A lovely looking piece of kit but hampered by DRM issues and a distinct lack of features."

Clearly, your memory is failing. The original iPod - the 5 Gigabyte one with the mechanical scroll wheel - was unhampered by DRM... because, well, DRM didn't exist. The iTunes Music Store didn't exist.

iTunes was a software product that ran under Apple's OS9, and soon after, OS X, and was ostensibly there to manage MP3s on your Mac. It was there to rip your CDs to AAC or MP3 - neither with DRM. AAC tracks and MP3s could be moved to devices that supported them. (IIRC, early versions of iTunes didn't even rip to AAC, hence some of my music is still in it's mp3 format). The 1st gen iPod appeared some time after iTunes was introduced.

Features? Well, autosyncing over 400mb/s firewire was /slightly/ quicker than 12mb/s USB 1.1 (the only option on other players at the time unless you count SD players). I'd say that was a feature. Physically smaller than the competition? Feature. A pleasure to use? Feature. 40 channel equaliser? Er, ya got me there.

Sorry for the history lesson, but it annoys me when people lay the whole DRM issue at Apples doorstep, when in fact it was instigated by the record industry so that Apple (and others) could sell music online. And everyone knows that.

Annoyance

I have the older style Macbook Pro complete with a Windows XP install for, yes, games. One of the many annoyances about Windows that really grinds my gears is the little notification (and this has been touched upon already) that I've just plugged in my headphones. Really? You don't say!

The action of grasping the headphone jack betwixt thumb and forefinger, positioning it in the hole that is the audio out port and pushing it home hadn't quite registered on my brain and I so needed that little message to tell me (which, incidentally, I have to dismiss with a click - however will I do that since Windows already believes that my motor functions have become disassociated with my cognitive processes). It reminds me of Clippy, but with "Hey, you're a dumbass that needs constant reminding!".

I imagine there was a meeting about this in Redmond in 2001:

"Wouldn't it be SO cool to tell the user the OS is, like, REALLY looking after things by notifying them of tiny, insignificant, everyday stuff like, hey, plugging something into the audio port?"

"Hey wow that would be SO neat!"

"Yeah, and it would show how we really know our stuff!"

"And with a footprint of only 30Mb it's a tiny addition the 3Gb install!"*

"I think I just peed myself!"

"Is there a notification for THAT?"

"Oh. My. God. That would be inSANE!"

"Windows could say 'Hey, it looks like you just peed yourself!'"

"And provide a link to an incontinence website!"

"Sweet Lord, Bill and Steve are going to go ape over this! Steve especially."

"High five man!"

"I love you man!"

Did I mention it annoyed me?

* I made that bit up

Steve Jobs should check out the UK Apple store...

So, as far as Steve Jobs is concerned, "Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2."

Oh really? He should maybe check out his own company's web-store, because out of 8 video cameras listed, 5 of them are miniDV based and almost certainly use firewire as the sole means of getting footage off the device for editing.

Admittedly, two are high-end semi-pro cameras and two are expensive HDV camcorders, but the purchaser of the remaining sub £200 standard def miniDV cam can look forward to shelling out £1400 just for the privilege of editing their holiday footage on a AluMac.

Yes, I'm aware the white MacBook is still available - but the message is clear - or should that be muddled, due to the above availability of new but apparently obsolete equipment from Apple.com.

@David Shepherd

I actually bought a Quaderno when it came out - back then the price differential between the Olivetti and 'real' laptops was substantial.

It was great and rubbish in equal measure. Great because it was a real XT-compatible PC in a tiny A5 form factor and as such could run most DOS apps of the day (Wordperfect and DataEase in my case). It had a voice memo recorder which could be operated from the lid-mounted controls. Also, it had a reasonable 20Mb HD AND could run off 8 AA batteries from a filling station if you were stuck.

It was rubbish for many reasons, but primarily because there wasn't an easy way to get data on and off it other than the proprietary serial cable and Laplink (although I think there was some sort of Intel or Microsoft app which allowed a serially linked PC to appear as a 115kbps drive. What fun.) The screen was a CGA-compatible device. That meant 640x480 text-only, or 320x200 graphics (shudder).

The screen hinge eventually broke and I think the screen got cracked so it got thrown out.

Anyway, I do still have an Atari Portfolio, which surely must be the granddaddy of the SCC?

@tony and everybody else using Windows exporer to manage their music

I think iTunes is good. It lets me sync my iPod in a few seconds without touching keyboard or mouse. Why is that bad?

I can't get my head around why *anyone* would want to use Explorer - of all things - to manage their music.

iTunes is a media database, and as such can do stuff a file system simply cannot.

Take smart playlists. Like a super-simple SQL, it leverages the metadata accompanying the music as well as that generated by your listening habits.

For example, want to make a playlist of stuff you haven't listened to in, say, 6 months? Do it with a few clicks in iTunes. Got 30 gigs of music but only a 16Gb player but absolutely need certain albums on there, the rest a random selection from your library? Again, a few clicks and you're set. Wanna refresh that 1Gb Shuffle with some different choons? 1 click.

Anyone that can't see the benefits of this kind of power over a large media collection needs to leave their cave once in a while.

Also, I can't think of a way you'd achieve any of the above in Explorer.