Posts by James Duncan

Commodore's forgotten Amiga Unix gets a modern revival

In the bin

When I moved out of my London house I had to empty the loft, which was full of old computers. It included 5 PC clones but more relevant to this story, my entire Amiga collection. This consisted of an Amiga 500, 1200, 2000 and 3000. Unfortunately I didnt even get to use the A3000 as it's PSU blew up upon turning it on. This was a second hand purchase when it was still the most powerful Amiga available. A total write off as I couldn't find any information on how to adapt a PC PSU to power an Amiga nor was there any avaiilablity of a spare PSU. Wish I had kept at least the 1200 as that still had the original box. Memories eh!

Qualcomm reportedly eyeing Intel's PC design biz and more

You forgot to mention Intel's desktop CPU's that stop working after 3 months and can't be fixed. This alone could sink Intel in the class suits building against them. Just dealing with all the returns and sending out replacemnt CPU's must be a huge drain on their bottom line.

Intel urges businesses to undergo AI PC facelift with vPro update

Can't get anywhere near that price in the UK. More like £200+ for a similar spec :(

Maybe a business opportunity with a US acquaintance who buys them and ships them over to me. Any takers?

Faraday plots a 64-core Arm chip with Intel inside

Re: Not news

Stupid yes, but rather profitable, Sold O2 for £16 billion in 2006 and purchased EE for £12.5 in 2015. I'd also say EE was an upgrade over O2,

Endemol in 'win a kidney' TV show rumpus

Follow up planned?

I assume they have planned a follow up program as they are only "giving away" one out of the two available kidney's. I also assume the three contestants have been screened for blood and cell compatibility otherwise the outcome won't be very good at all...

Sky recruiting to fill Sky+ customisation gap

I'll save Sky some money... implement these ideas :)

I've always had a stack of ideas for Sky's digibox and if they implemented just some of them it would greatly increase the functionality of the box and also probably their market share. Unfortunately this will only work if they open up their software a little, which is unlikely ever to happen…

For starters their EPG is probably the best I've ever used but as previously mentioned reliability must be greatly improved.

Sky should use the new Sky+ box planned for 2008 to make a killer application. This must include at a minimum the following:

1) Media Extender technology to allow Ethernet streaming of content from PC’s to HDTV, i.e. Apple TV, etc

2) Streaming of content from Digibox to multiple PC’s (local or Internet based), i.e. TiVo

3) Learning of users viewing habits with automatic record, i.e. TiVo (already mentioned)

4) Remote control API access so you can easily record programs, change channel with confirmation, etc. This feature has been missing for far too long…

5) Built in media server with full playback functionality for all common formats with easy file upload from PC, MP3 player, etc via USB or Ethernet

6) eSATA support so the internal HDD space can be easily upgraded (I think the HD box has this already?)

7) Minimum of three tuners

8) Built in HD Freeview support (probably never happen but Sky is currently a shareholder in Freeview) – This would be a forth tuner. Some channels are free on Freeview but not on Sky, etc

9) ADSL router functionality so you can surf the net via your PC

10) Proper VoD via ADSL2+ (already mentioned)

11) Web surfing via HDTV screen with optional Bluetooth mouse and keyboard

12) Built in DVD-RW functionality to backup your programs to playable DVD's (plus easy DVD playback). Make it HD-DVD and BluRay compatible for extra wow factor ;)

The list goes on… This of course would require a more powerful CPU and additional memory, which in turn would speed up the Interactive services. These are just far too slow to load at the moment. Sky please please fully cache these programs locally on the box when you have more memory available!

James

PS: Of course none of this will happen as Sky won't ever have the balls to upset Hollywood and its love of DRM!