Posts by Dave 126

Re: ha

Thank you for joining in, Dazed and Bemused.

Physical buttons, tricky one- my Sony Android phone has three buttons that respond to the merest touch, and so annoyingly get activated by accident. Gr. Still, maybe this capacitive solution is more durable - I had a few phones 'back in the day' that had a real button stop working. Conversely, I would like my camera to have the option of using a shutter release that doesn't require pressure, since it would lessen the chance of bringing motion blur to photos.

If I could make an improvement to my phone, it would be for it to have a millimetre ruler etched down the side - it's such a square lump of aluminium that it's ideal for it.

Re: ha

And the iPod didn't change for several years - so what? It it is better and more profitable to release a new product when the technology allows, not before. Heck, it's good for products to pause in their advancement at times - it allows them to be refined and for any bugs to be ironed out. If flexible displays, super batteries, or a change in people's usage develop, Apple will aim to bring out suitable new products. And so will others, including Samsung if the recent news about them starting a Silicon Valley division for buying suitable start-ups is anything to go by.

All these comments about Apple kit not changing - and none of them actually saying what they would actually like to see in a new product.

C'mon- this is as good a venue as any to exercise your imagination.

Re: I can't be the only one...

>Alternatively, run Windows but don't bog it down with boatloads of crapware.

Win 7 is a touch annoying... It will boot in about 30 secs off an SSD, but takes a minute longer if there is a USB HDD attached. Gr.

Re: Computer misselling

That twerp in Currys who just was showing my old man an i3 desktop... he just kept spurting out what were to my father meaningless numbers, not noticing that his eyes had glazed over almost as soon as he started speaking.

Another was in Comet years back... as soon as we said we would buy the laptop, the 'assistant' started trying to sell us an extended warranty by demonstrating the flimsy build quality of the machine (actually, he was just poking the back of the lid to make the LCD screen ripple- pretty harmless). "Oh forget the whole thing" we said and walked out to buy a laptop elsewhere.

Re: Thing is...

@ The OtherHobbes I've just posted similar ideas to you, but you've put it better.

Our society could do with indoor public spaces that aren't based on a £/hour rate disguised as a £2.50 cup of coffee. Something akin to a university campus for adults, freelancers, hobbyists... a library, mail-ordered parcels can be signed for and dispatched, crèches for freelancing parents, equipment rentals.

[Strange- Chrome's spelling correction has placed the 'e' in crèches in bold- what that all about?]

Be bloody careful with your description of the condition- those on-line vinyl buyers are an exacting lot!

Re: Supraluminal?

I would imagine that it involves colostomy bags, tubes of purée and coffee-dispensing straws.

Maybe the reason we don't see people visit the toilet in Star Trek is that the transporter can be used to displace bodily waste directly from the bowel and bladder.

>Some people, intelligent ones too - have just way too much time on their hands.

It would be nice to think that millennia of technological progress had left us with more leisure time for activities of our own choosing; socialising, art, music and general farting around. Alas, it doesn't work out that way.

Re: This is a standard tactic...

>...used by Apple, Google, Nintendo et al. Deliberately under supply, then loads of clueless rags will run stories like "ZOMG! Surface Pro sold out!"

You have to think VERY carefully before spending a shed-load of money on extra production lines for what may prove be a short-lived spike in demand (or indeed a product flop)- you would be spending tens of millions of pounds just to get a few extra sales in the first month of release, sales you might get anyway.

The ideal situation from a manufacturing engineer's perspective would be one production line working at a steady rate all year round. In defence of Nintendo, they do have a seasonal spike prior to Christmas.

I'm not saying that these companies are upset by the free publicity, but it is grounded in manufacturing reality.

Re: A watch to make calls through your phone? How i-nnovative

>Of course with an iWatch, you'll have to charge it too

Since we're talking of hypotheticals at this stage, don't narrow your thinking so!

It depends on how much power it requires to do what it does. A few weeks back on the Reg, we had Zigbee light switches that took all the power they needed from the user throwing the switch, by means of piezo crystals. If that is too simplistic, then Apple have patents on certain aspects of wireless charging (namely a mechanism that prioritises which devices on your desk are charged first).

Swatch tried introducing 'internet time' many years ago, subdividing the rotation of the earth into 'beats'. It didn't take off. But then, Swatch had a fairly normal-looking (by Swatch standards) watch with pager back in '94.

Re: Screen res

>1080 is not enough when we have tablets at far better resolutions.

It would be nice to be able to use these high-res tablets as dumb monitors.

>Meanwhile how about an Android dongler for yer tv?

A mate got one the other day, sits inline the HDMI cable, haven't had in-depth feedback, but he seems happy enough with it. However, a £25 gadget will give 1080 media playback. If you need to browse the web in your living room, then maybe a tablet or second-hand Thinkpad are better options for your £75, so your OH can continue watching the TV.

Generally speaking, set-top boxes can do Youtube, Netflicks and iPlayer, and Android devices with HDMI-out and a Flash capable browser can do the more <cough> esoteric streaming sites.

I know you work with daftly high res images, so I'd assumed you'd want a higher res screen than this offers.

Down the line we can look forward to more things like this, for when you return to the desk: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thunderbolt,3263-8.html

Re: HP website claims it has gigabit ethernet....

Its not a good idea (and is unnecessary) for all of your USB ports to be USB 3.0 - it can cause you headaches if you want to install a different OS. Can't speak for Linux, but Win 7 doesn't like it. The installer will run from a USB 3.0-connected DVD drive, but once it wants to copy across files it starts asking for a driver disk.

Re: Did you really just say

>Shipping any pc in 2013 that does not have decent GPU is unforgivable.

It is decent enough for most users- check the reviews and benchmarks. It isn't top-notch, but it is decent enough for most games at medium settings, very good at media transcoding, and will happily output 1080 video across a couple of monitors, so really it is only the serious gamers, CAD and CUDA users who will want more. Generally speaking, they are aware of what their needs are and will buy accordingly.

This isn't a machine I would buy, but don't judge it for not being a gaming laptop or mobile workstation. Peoples usage varies.

Re: Numerical keypad

>I wonder- has any laptop ever tried placed the numeric below the alpha keys and to to the right of the touchpad?

Someone downvoted a question... okaay. I did make a grammatical mistake, but a comment along the lines of "That's a stupid idea because: ..." would be more useful than a downvote.

Re: Numerical keypad

I wonder- has any laptop ever tried placed the numeric below the alpha keys and to to the right of the touchpad? With the exception of some Lenovo laptops that put a Wacom digitiser there, that space is not usually used.

Re: the pair of firms would be better off burying the blunt hatchet

>More proof that Jobs was using a publicly owned company contrary to the shareholders interests.

I think that any proof would be better expressed in numbers. Profit? Apple doing okay. Share value? Very difficult to prove that it isn't as high as it could have been, or to prove causation after it has been filtered through the market- which is based on risks, projections, analysis and gut-feelings.

If you bought your shares in Apple when they were still on the ascendant, you should be happy. If you bought them afterwards, without looking at the company and Mr Jobs, tough titty. The whole basis of shares gaining value is that you are being rewarded for assuming some risk.

Re: David's dangler

>"Sex was invented by the ancient Greeks, but it took the Romans to introduce it to women".

>Anything the Romans did was a Greek copy. So whatever they did, the Greeks would have to have done it first.

It was a joke, and only mildly homophobic (though many of gay men I know won't complain since they get so much fun out of poking fun at the exploits of us heterosexuals). Of course Greek men and women got together to make more Greeks.

Re: It's just a penis.

>Kryten: But it's hideous! That's the best design they could come up with!?

Q: What is the knob on the end for?

German scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the man!

French Scientist: It is to give more pleasure to the woman!

British Scientist: It is to stop your hand falling off the end!

Modern fluid modelling suggests the knob on the end has evolved to act as a plunger, removing what might have been left there by a previous gentleman- all the better to promote your genetic material. More civilised than easting his offspring after the fact, as lions have been known to.

Anyway, here's a Monty Python song, NSFW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPFUYUUdQ

Re: This doesn't go far enough!

>Animals and humans should have them removed as well!

I've said it before- if some fundamentalist cult wants to travel the world putting trousers on animals to preserve their modesty, then I would like to watch them try. From a safe distance.

(I used to know a fly-poster who was employed by Levi's to attach jeans to public statues... of course the jeans undid down the legs to allow them to be attached to figures whose feet were attached to the base.)

Re: Simpsons did it

Iain Banks did it too- one of his teenage characters wears a t-shirt with a print of David on it. Her father objects, so she sews a felt fig-leaf on to it.

Re: Oh look...

Alice Cooper is now a Christian, like his father before him, but during their boozing heyday his band used to send flowers to Mary Whitehouse in gratitude- money couldn't buy the kind of publicity she provided them.

Re: David's dangler

>oh my...I'm not even sure I want to know how you know this [The ancient Greeks had an aesthetic style that favoured small penises with a long prepuce.]

History of Art and the Classics used to be considered part of a rounded (some would say elitist) education:

"Sex was invented by the ancient Greeks, but it took the Romans to introduce it to women".

Re: So in summary

>Commercial audio creation apps on iOS? Seriously who would be using a phone to create music?

Lots of people... smart phones are less phones, and more general-purpose computers. The iPad is commonly used as a control surface for a Mac, for virtual mixing desks and the like, and will happily act as a synth for any MIDI keyboard attached to it- handy for recording melodies on the road. True, you wouldn't want to pass your audio stream through an iDevice- but then you wouldn't through any kit that wasn't designed for it- hence pricey external soundcards with branded ADCs. This should give you a flavour:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2011/02/how-to-use-midi-to-make-an-ipad-more-musically-connected-productive-video-resources/

This guy routinely uses the G sensors in an arm-mounted iPhone in live performances- the rest of the kit he has built/modified himself and has open-sourced it on Thingiverse: http://onyx-ashanti.com/

Then you have all the acoustic musicians who use the iPad in place of sheet music http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/musicians-embrace-the-ipad-leave-sheet-music-at-home/243726/ , and use phones as guitar tuners and sound recorders (with plug-in microphones and ADCs).

I'm sure you don't need reminding that technology (and drugs) can change the sound of music, from Bach's clavier, through Wheatsone's concertina to Bo Diddely's solid-bodied electric guitar and the 808 and DX7 in the eighties.

Re: So in summary

Most Android devices can't handle audio fast enough - why do think that most of the commercial audio creation apps are on iOS? (See link above link)

Re: Useless really

>Calls from behind NHS switchboards are given as 'withheld', and due to data protection, these callers often won't leave any useful information on answerphones.

It is my understanding that public services have to ring you back on a non-withheld number. My friend has paid BT a quid a month for years to block all unknown numbers to his landline. I asked him about doctors etc, and he said they were required to call him from an identifiable number.

I answered an 'unknown number' the other Saturday evening on my mobile, turned out to be a mate requiring a lift home from a police station in the next city (after being released without charge)- his mobile had no credit since he had neglected to pick up his cash card when they arrested him from his house. He had tried his brother and his closer mates, but not one had picked up his call - no doubt expecting it to be a sales call.

Re: AAISP Honeypot

In "Greetings! Carbon-based Bipeds!" (collected essays), Arthur C Clarke outlined his plan to hack his fax machine so as to cost the senders of spam faxes money: IIRC, it amounted to manipulating packets so the sending machine would keep trying to send spam in vain.