
argh!
I wish I was a toast fan as much as a BSG (both original and new series) fan! Oh well, have these:
http://www.haku.co.uk/b3ta/CylonGarfunkel.jpg
http://www.haku.co.uk/b3ta/CylonGarfunkel2.jpg
1902 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2007
don't OLED displays suffer from poor (compared to CRT/LCD) lifetimes?
The manufacturers have to remember that some people will leave their tv on for as long as they're awake, and longer if they fall asleep in front of it with or without the sleep timer. CRTs can cope with decades of such usage patterns but I doubt OLEDs will.
Oh, wait, that's built-in obselecense isn't it, silly me - how else would they make you buy a new set right after the warranty runs out...
naah, the movie would be over by the time all the popcorn has popped, besides I'm having trouble believing it actually works because there's a cut in the middle of the video clip where suddenly it's full of popcorn, whereas I CAN believe this USB powered meat cooker is real, granted it does use the power from 30 USB ports...
http://xe.bz/aho/24/
but here in the UK you'll need to spend a serious amount of money to get any return from it, plus the price of panels are still HIDEOUSLY expensive compared to the US etc. Sure you could make your own panels by buying a large batch of cells & wiring them up yourself into waterproof frames, but it's still not cheap and a lot of hassle.
One minor flaw in having solar-roof cars, I haven't seen many garages with see-through roofs...
IMHO it's a waste of energy, time & money to make & install the curtains, the house could not be near any trees (including bushes on the ground) or other buildings that may shade the solar curtains because the power produced from solar panels significantly drops if even a small part is shaded by your hand or even a few leaves, and then to get the most out of the sunlight provided you have to angle the panels/curtains at the sun because in the middle of the summer you'd want your solar panel/curtains to be almost flat not vertical (as in the case of hanging curtains)
Just stick panels on the roof like everyone else is doing.
Incedentally I live literally just down the road from where Damien Hurst has bought a new building for his studios and will be spending £1.5M on a 310kw solar setup, the building is still an empty shell but I'm keeping a curious eye on the progress whenever I pass by.
As much as I think this a completly dumb idea in the overall picture of the internet, I can see one or two groups of people combining spending forces to acquire custom TLD's such as .jedi where contributers would get the chance to have their own sub-level domain name for free.
Can we have a new internet please? this one is overflowing with an abundance of spammers, scammers, bloggers, governments trying to control it, RIAA/MPAA etc. trying to control it etc.
Someone should initiate a photography flash mob somewhere in a town where it's perfectly legal to take photographs.
Everyone turn up at say 1pm sharp with a camera - any camera, cameraphone/SLR/disposable/wristwatch etc., take a photo, wander round the general area and stop to take another photo at exactly 1:05, do some more wandering in the general area and take another photo at 1:10 and continue the cycle until 1:30 where everyone disperses and goes on their way/home etc.
Then everyone upload their photos to Flickr or somewhere pre-designated just so everyone can have a look.
http://www.getmiro.com/
Very nice piece of software, avoid skimming through a host of ad-loaded websites for your supply of "aww cute kitten!" and ilk videos, still in it's early days as there are a ton of features still needed to raise it to superb level, one of which I'd like is to be able to convert the downloaded video files to other formats for playing on PMP's etc.
"Surely this just advertises that there is a mobile on charge in the tent?"
Use the wind turbine to charge a portable battery pack meant for charging mobile phones etc., sure you'll lose some of the generated energy by not charging the mobile direct but you won't have to leave it in the tent.
I can get over 3 hours on this 701 Eee, but where are the ~£300 mark legtops (too small to be called laptop) with absurdly exceptional battery life? I'm talking 8+ hours with screen on full brightness & wifi on, most of these designs of laptop concentrate more on the layout of the screen/keyboard/ports and then just slap the battery somewhere on the back wherever they can squeeze it in.
Sure a long battery life legtop would be heavier but I could live with that, using the standard cylindrical cells saves them money but what about the flat types of battery used in mp3 players/mobiles etc.? a bunch of those on the underneath of the unit would help with stability (the Eee can have a tendancy to tip backwards when on uneven surfaces) and give you exceptional runtimes.
What's with the unsightly bezel around the touchpad & fugly hindge on the 901? the 701/900 hindge design is so much nicer, and the picture you're showing of the side of the unit is photoshopped - the power input socket is oval whilst the hindge is perfectly circular.
So what will the "real deal" look like in the end? all we've seen are the maniuplated images Asus have given the press.
Thumbs down on the fugly design, thumbs up on the 6 cell battery, bluetooth & faster processor though.
Steven Knox wrote: "How about "Toy Laptops"? Just like toy dogs, they're more for show than for any real use and their owners are way too enamoured of them."
No way man! I got my EeePC last year and it has been immensely useful due to it's small size & sheer portability, had I spent the same amount on a 'full size' laptop I would have been cursing it almost daily due to the sheer size/weight/unportability of them compared to the EeePC.
You can't hold a normal laptop on the palm of one hand whilst typing with the other, and not have to put it down after 30 seconds because awkwardness & weight of the thing makes your arm ache badly, but you CAN with an EeePC.
I've discovered a car boot seller who picks up the returns from Maplins, digging through their £2each/3for£5 boxes I've picked up some great bargains that overall would have cost 10x had I bought it direct from Maplins. Only 2 things didn't work but I fixed them; battery terminals needed bending on a portable soldering iron, which I then used to fix a resistor (bad joint) on a laser diode of another item.
"but electric bicycles are just too expensive."
Not when you compare it to car ownership.
My UM36 electric bike cost £900 with a lithium battery a year ago, roughly in the middle of the price range of ebikes. Maybe it is expensive for a bike (looked at the top end normal bikes lately?) but I don't own a car so it's basically my main transport, I ride it literally daily but if I'd bought a car for £900 (or even got one free) instead I'd then have to shell out on tax/mot/repairs/fuel/insurance...
Someone on an electric bike forum worked out their car over 4 years of ownership & eventual sale cost them 70p/mile (adding up all car related receipts) yet an electric bike can be less than 4p/mile (factoring in a replacement £300 lithium battery every 2 years but not factoring in the initial bike cost).
One of the main reasons electric bikes are legal to ride on roads is because they have pedals and are not totally reliant on battery+motor power (but using a throttle on an ebike is a lot of fun - especially in summer when you get too hot pedalling)
But if the Segway does get the thumbs up and it becomes legal to ride on the road and/or pavement then it'll open up the floodgates to a massive range of electric powered transport, which would be good and bad at the same time.
Good because there are some excellent pedal-less 'bikes' & scooter type vehicles just waiting for the red tape to be cut, but bad because it would probably mean an influx of cheap crappy battery powered scooters, and guess what age range would probably be using them the most... pavements would become less safe than they are from the power-less scooters kids are on, or if they were on the roads then car drivers would have yet more people to avoid running over.
Having the Eee in black just makes it look like every other laptop out there - nothing particularly special about it except the small size, I really like my white 701 because for one you can see the keys much easier in lower light conditions and will be getting a white 900 when the Atom version is released.
So does this mean the power consumption of SSD is low enough to make it cheaper in the long run than using traditional HD's, despite the absurdly high $/£ per GB of SSD compared to HD?
And what about the SSD write cycle lifetime? I know when the Asus Eee came out there were a lot of people who were worried about the SSD failing within a year or two because of the write cycle lifetime of flash storage - not something I'm worried about with this Eee because it's not a critical device for me that I regularly read/write gigabytes of data to it's drive & SD card, but servers tend to be a bit more harsh in that respect.
I look forward to the day when SSD is cheaper per GB than HD, hopefully Google's interest will push this one step closer.
and novelty cigarette lighters - WHY?
First time you use one there's the "ooh, a button!" *click* response then the novelty wears off very quickly, the extra gubbins installed eat up valuable space originally used for holding the butane gas so you find the lighter regularly needs to be refilled.
BTW, best gadget I've ever owned, got 3 & always carry one with me, is a PhotonLight keychain torch - very bright, very durable, not cheap but the lifetime guarantee is most welcome.
Reading the title & subject matter of this publicity stunt reminds me of a certain 1980's (colour, not the original black/white) Twilight Zone episode "The Elevator" where two brothers go and try to find their father in his warehouse type lab and discover he's been working on a growth serum, in one part of the building they find this mass of meat which has been grown for food (or something), it looked pretty disgusting.
I wouldn't want to eat "test tube meat", it sounds like something out of a sci-fi horror movie, the idea kinda makes my skin crawl.
It's true I use PayPal for virtually all my eBay transactions but in no way would I like to be restricted to only PayPal for eBay transactions, and as for them saying that PayPal only for Aus citizens for security purposes that's a joke in itself - to log into my online bank I need to enter in two number passwords and two random letters of a 3rd text password. To log into my PayPal account I just need my email address and a single password, which if someone found out they could drain my bank account as it's directly linked to PayPal.
Governments or whoever regulates this sort of things (companies dealing with lots of money) should force PayPal to become an international bank so they take more responsibility towards fraud etc.
When I got my Archos AV500 almost 2.5 years ago I did a test of playing video and got just shy of 6 hours, this extended to about 8 hours when outputting to a tv so the screen wasn't draining power. Now I'm lucky if I get up to 2 hours playback, the battery is work out.
These miniature laptops (legtops? palmtops?) are excellent for playing video because they can play practically any format you throw at them ust by getting the right codecs (which unlike Archos' offerings, won't cost you a penny) but the biggest advantage PMP's still have over laptops is the battery life, PMPs being double that of a laptop, and Cowon trump the lot with their high capacity batteries.
If my hosting provider did something like that then I'd be looking for a new one ASAP, even if you can opt-out it's morally wrong that you're automatically opted in, though when did morals ever get in the way of making a quick dollar...
I still say Bill Hicks hit the nail square on the head with his piece about "if anyone here is in marketing or advertising, kill yourself" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
that coffee IS shit! Long live tea!
While we're at it, what cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spineless, worm-headed sack of monkey shit thought it was a good idea to have coffee sweets?
On the vileness charts they're second only to dogmess.
A malicious person could get a lot of innocent people in hot water with a honeypot URL and a bit of wardriving+piggybacking, especially with the amount of unencrypted and easily crackable WEP encrypted routers out there.
Also as "no" pointed out, it would be very trivial to get people to visit a honeypot URL just by posting it somewhere - it could be obfusicated by using tinyurl or the like and you wouldn't know the destination unless you clicked it, but more frightening is how easy it would be to make their browser automatically visit a honeypot URL just by using an img src tag in a forum/messageboard post.
Summertime + cars + me = zzzap, I've often in past summertimes gotten out of a car, gone to lock it up and got a nasty zap from the lock, to avoid this I would hold onto the key and let the spark jump from the lock to the key instead of me, however it's not funny when you go to fill the car up and get a zap from the fuel cap... I mostly ride an electric bike now (no, not static powered)
I remember a few years ago seeing a news piece about a woman who would trigger store security alarms, her body would act like those magnetic security strips.
I went to a Siggraph expo in London waaay back in 1994 and there was a Silicon Graphics Onyx Reality Engine setup with a virtual skiing game, had to hold two handles like sticks and wear a belt with another sensor, the belt was so you could physically jump up in the air and the character on screen would follow suit.
Oh for crying out loud! not ANOTHER fricken person going on about how they (or someone else) could have bought a 'real' laptop for the price of an Eee and how the 'real' laptop can do more because it's faster/bigger hd/bigger screen etc.
Well you COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT OF THE EEE, it's very lightweight compared to a 'real' laptop of the same price and more importantly it's literally pocket sized (I can easily fit it in my coat pocket, sideways orientated), no spinning drive inside so it's more rugged etc. etc. and if I could be botherd I'd list more reasons but I don't think you'll listen.
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/wall.gif (if only something like this could be a posting icon)
How could I forget this little-known classic favourite of mine, with the 'Bill & Ted' actors Alex Winters, Keanu Reeves as Ortiz the Dog Boy (uncredited), one of Randy Quaid's best performances ever and Mr. T as a bearded lady (seriously!). It has such lines as:
"You trust your lives to a guy just because he can lick his own balls?"
"You're ugly enough to burn the nose hairs off a dead nun"
"I just laid a turd that's the spitting image of Kim Basinger!"
When they talk about infra-red I can only assume they mean the type of camera that can see in the dark by way of infra-red lighting, not thermal imaging which sees heat, thermal cameras cannot see through glass so they'd be useless for trying to count the number of people in a car.
If the Americans were as prudish as implied here and in many news reports about accidental & deliberate tits & ass being shown on tv then how did shows like "Lucky Louie" & "Californication" get aired?
Admittedly "Lucky Louie" did get a ton of complaints and canned after the first season but IMHO it was THE funniest tv show I've seen in years, "Californication" on the other hand went even further with it's on-screen debauchery and it appears everyone loves it, I'll wager it's only because of David "Spooky Mulder" Duchovny being in it that it didn't get complained about as much as "Lucky Louie".
I think Mike Judge has been doing a version of "Scrooge", if you look at "Office Space" as "Christmas present" and "Idiocracy" as "Christmas future" it means he still has a "Christmas past" film to do, in that his films are a warning to everyone to stop having meaningless jobs and smarten up (perhaps take more stupid people out of the gene pool, putting sterilising substances in scratch cards & lottery tickets would be a good start).
P.S. did you get the memo about the TPS reports?
Don't they mean line-in? I hate that kind of bullshit marketing, jumping on whatever's the current bandwagon craze just to shift a few more units on the lure that it does more than it says on the box.
I have two of the original Dubreq Stylophones, each has a different pitch, though sadly I can't play a tune on them to save my life.
Are you still trying continuing with your one-man-campaign against the Eee? If what you described of the keyboard was the norm on these things then people would be complaining about it *everywhere*, so either you're lying or the one you used was badly abused before you got to try it.
The keyboard problems you experienced, keys getting stuck etc., I haven't experienced any of that with this Eee I'm typing on which I got last Nov, perhaps the build quality has dropped with production being ramped up to meet demand or it hasn't been treated well. I find the build quality of the Eee pretty good, I haven't been too gentle with it (it's slowly building up a collection of 'war wound' scratches) and nothing's getting loose or creaking badly.
The problems I've had with the keyboard are the actual layout of the keys with some in the 'wrong' place, namely the right shift is the wrong side of the up arrow, there's no right Ctrl key, the "\" is a sub-key of Z which only works when you press the Fn at the same time, and the worst of all is the "" key which for some reason they decided to place it to the right of Esc instead of underneath which means I've often mis-typed numbers because I expect them to be 1 key to the right of where they are. I have quite large hands and haven't found the small size of the keyboard a problem but actually really like it, when I go back and use regular sized keyboards they feel like over-sized comedy keyboards - the same with mice because I bought a mini-mouse for it which is about 1/3 the size of regular mice and I really like that too.