Posts by kulibar tree

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

Past and Present

Some contributors suggested Harry Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!

There are a several of other terrific alternative history novels: Ward Moore's Bring The Jubilee (the North loses the Civil War); Keith Roberts's Pavane (the Spanish Armada is successful; England returns to the Catholic fold); and PK Dick's The Man in the High Castle, in which the Axis Powers win the Second World War - it's a zillion times better than Robert Harris's feeble rip-off, Fatherland.

And as for future history, you cannot do better than the truly fantastic stories by Cordwainer Smith.

Fixing the UK's DAB disaster

BBC Greedy and Cynical (what else is knew?)

I agree with Ben (somewhere further back on this page) - good quality FM is better than DAB: my 20 year old Quad FM4 tuner knocks the spots off the Cambridge tuner I bought a couple of years ago.

However, I'd argue that the main reason is that the BBC has been too greedy and cynical in the the number of stations it transmits, meaning a lower bitrate all round.

R3 may be at 192kbps at the moment, but it periodically has to share its bandwidth with R5, when the bitrate drops alarmingly.

Too many of its stations are in mono - and these are are supposed to be for discerning, specialist music fans?

The World Service sounds horribly boxy, as if it's coming down a long corridor.

But the worst was making R7 mono only - the website cynically says, oh, that's OK 'cause most of the stuff was recorded in mono anyway, which isn't really true: since the 1980s at least, almost all R4 output has been in stereo.

DAB really could have been OK, but it's been implemented by people with cloth ears.

Adobe pulls bug-riddled Photoshop update

Scanning With Acrobat 8

Maybe I'm missing something but when I want to scan a document into Acrobat 8 I first have to say where it's got to be saved, which is tiresome especially as I then have to delete it if i don't then want it.

I don't know any other prog where you have to save a doc before creating it.

Do other users have this problem?

I've now gone back to Acrobat 7 which doesn't have any such nonsense.

I wonder what on earth Adobe were thinking of.

eBayers offload eBay Xmas prezzie on eBay

Area Man Ebays Ebay

Are you sure this isn't one of The Onion's cast-offs? It's got all the hallmarks of one of their stories!

Cheers.