Posts by Robert E A Harvey

HP Z1 quad-core Xeon 27in PC

more like it

2560x1440 screen - you can change everything except the screen, so that's a good choice.

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

@Bailey86

At $MEGACORP the IT people have yet to get all our business applications and portals working in W7, they might run it out in 2013 or 2014. If they stop that and start again in W8, they lose 2 years, and then do they leave us still on XP while they throw that away and start again from scratch when W9 comes out?

Of course, if windows were a stable, well-written platform with established and maintained APIs you could upgrade the OS without breaking the Apps. But it isn't, so you can't.

irrelevant

Given that some local authorities only migrated TO XP in the last 18 months or so, and that even the most forward thinking businesses are still qualifying W7, it may well be that Redmond expects big business to move to W7 after XP, and take 3 or 4 years about it, by which time the tablet wars will be won (or lost, supposing they even start. I reckon MS is too late to that party by a generation).

The natural path for Corporates is XP -> W7 sometime in 2014, then W7 -> W11 some time in 2022.

The success of W8 will not matter in the corporate market. They are not going to up sticks and go to Linux (much as I wish they would) because of W8. They will just stick with XP then W7.

Microsoft is, I agree, looking like someone taking very careful aim at their own foot. But to shoot themselves in the other one they would have to prevent corporations migrating to W7 for the remainder of the decade, and past history suggests they won't do that.

LinkedIn users buried in spam after database leak

oh?

so not just hashed passwords then?

UK Gov not using six million of its software licences

Hmm.

"CDS, the web publishing SME which built the low-spec assets and services information repository Ask ICT, hopes to include a resource description framework in the next release. "

At least the random buzzword generator is in fine fettle.

Code glitch floored Reg reader altimeter

quick - call him back

I reckon you should ask him to keep the rate-of-climb calculation - the best indication of being at the maximum altitude the balloon can reach will be the rate of climb falling toward zero as the baloon loses the ability to lift.

AMD crashes Windows 8 tablet party with ultrathin hybrid

resting?

'resting' battery life? That seems kinda pointless.

Microsoft confirms UK.gov to dodge licensing hike... almost

Which in itself is remarkable

... on both sides

Transit of Venus, live-ish from Australia

Thanks for the feed

This has worked reliably throughout the night, unlike most of the others - including Slooh and Nasa - so well done El Reg.

SPB have until 2117 to molish an above-the-clouds observatory for the next one.

Council builds £2.8m shared database of vulnerable kids

shudder

The first thought that went through my mind was "shopping list". I don't trust local authorities to keep this sort of thing accurate and secure enough. I bet even primary school secretaries will end up with access.

Ten... bits of Jubilee tat tech

Re: Bah!

Only in the superstitious countries, like the USA. There is no significance to an old flag in the UK, and no reason not to cut it up for boot polishing rags.

Snopes has a piece on the USAnian regulation:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/flagday/burnflag.asp

without touching on the rest of the world.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb.html#disposal

makes interesting reading

Basically Junk

I agree with LaeMing, the mouse & the radio (both wireless, of course...) are worth a second look, the rest are ghastly.

So are the mouse & the radio, after a second look.

Sharp to show OLED 'retina' display for laptops

about bleeding time too

Screen resolutions have been going backwards for years. If this can reverse the trend I am all for it!

Vauxhall Ampera hybrid e-car

Re: no use to me

You can get some quite decent motors for that sort of money:

http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/classic-car-page/168243/1985-audi-quattro/

http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/classic-car-page/167999/1987-mercedes-benz-560/

http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/classic-car-page/166779/1962-morris-minor/

Older cars have done with breaking down, I reckon, and you can fix them yerselves

Re: Ripoff price?

Who gets the government's £5K?

I STRONGLY suspect the makers of e-cars add 5K to the price so that they are getting the discount, not you.

No.

Too complex, too heavy, too expensive. and too slow to charge.

Complex cyberwar tool 'Flame' found all over Middle East

The Kraken wakes?

the ITU? who woke them up?

Re: There is a 4th option...

I thought Levinson had already killed off Murdoch?

Scan co-jacking nets crooks '€40k in IT gear'

40K

yet they have to fence this stuff on to cash in on the scam. How much are they going to get? 4K? 10K tops. Seems a lot of effort for not much return. They'd do better flogging fake Costa franchises, where they are trousering cash.

Sony KDL-55HX853 55in 3D LED TV

Let's get it over with now

3D? meh.

LED backlit != LED

£1800 and no glasses? sharp practice

55" and 1080p ? = big fat pixels

55" - not in any house I can afford.

Walled Garden internet = not internet at all

Sony? not in a thousand years, thank you.

oh yes, nearly forgot

'Ow m-m-m-uch Gr-Granville?

TalkTalk subsidiary's customer data placed on the web in IIS whoopsie

Re: Suprising

my detector of exploding sarcasm detectors just exploded.

Re: @AC 09:44

Static ip address, no cap, allegedly no shaping (though I have my doubts), uk call centres, inertia.

@AC 09:44

I am a talk talk business customer. A residential one. Freedom2surf was merged with Opal & became TalkTalkBusiness

Boffins develop nanoscale vacuum tube running at .46 THz

Re: @Robert E A Harvey -- somewhat older in fact -- A ceramic power tube methinks.

Interesting. Yet ITT specifically splashed them as 'vacuumless'. I wonder what was going on?

re:Since when were thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) digital devices?

Since W,H. Eccles, F.W. Jordan, "Improvements in ionic relays" British patent number: GB 148582 (June 1918)?

or O. E. Schmitt [Jour. Sci. Instr., 15, 24-26 (1938)] ?

Both transistors & themionic valves are linear devices that at the extremety of the load lines exhibit switch-like voltsdrop & pass currrent values. By saturating them hard you can defone two discrete states with a rapid transition between them.

Seems just as digital as a transistor to me.

Re: somewhat older in fact

In the late 60s ITT built a marine HF transmitter with 'solid state valves' or 'vacuumless tubes' depending which side of the pond you were from. I never did find out what was inside. They still had heaters & similar anode voltages. The package was ceramic wit a BFO heatsink on the top.

oh?

we measure power in volts now?

YouTube takes on Instagram with 'Frontrow'

Prior art?

Surely 'FrontRow' is the name of a tiresome radio programme on the BBC? and has been for 30 years?

ITU adopts two ultra-high def TV specs

Hurrah!

If the glass-makers start doing 4K screens some might end up in laptops and let me see the whole Logic5000 editor without desktop scrolling!

Trekkie wants to build USS Enterprise … in twenty years

" our own little planet's gravity well"

Space Elevator.

That is all.

Toshiba America says no to new netbooks

letterbox screens?

The only reason I have for even thinking about replacing ny dell netbook is the irritatingly low 600 vertical pixels. If I blow getting on for 900 quid on an ultrabook I will get... 768? What is the point?

Top Facebook exec begs students: 'Click on an ad or two'

Re: What adverts?

I am happy to use adblock and ghostery to cut back their hedonism a bit

IP law probe MPs hunt for smoking gun, find plenty of smoke

allegedly

Noise can improve quantum computing, says ANU scientist

It’s quantum computing: of course there’s a paradox

Best subhead of the year!

Vulture 2 trigger triggers serious head-scratching

rate of change

Whatever method you choose, presumably the optimal altitude is where the baloon runs out of lift, at which point the rate of climb will be tending to zero.

Such a system would overcome the downrange problem with the spherical methods - downrange speed would be roughly constant, so rate of change would be zero (for all practical solutions - if the slant range was > 45 degrees it would be wrong, but I am guessing the slant range will be no more than 2 degrees off zenith).

Range-range timing

Before GPS we used to use a whole variety of hyperbolic positioning systems. One that ought to work well here is a range-range or pinground system. Have the platform send a radio ping to a repeater on the ground and wait for the (frequency offset) return. the round trip time will define a sphere around the ground station, and hence be a good approximation to altitude. I am sure baloons go more up than sideways.

Back it up with the baloon straingauge and a timer, mind.

Will UK.gov crack down on itself for missing Cookie Law deadline?

Re: Met Office website

After I diagnosed it myself - they made no sensible suggestions- I got the following from one Sarah Martin:

Dear Robert

Thank you for your email.

"The Met Office uses Webtrends Analytics to understand how people are using the website and identify areas that can be improved or removed."

This is covered in our cookie policy page: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/help/cookies#third-partyy

I hope this helps.

Kind Regards

Sarah

Met Office Customer Feedback

I now use Meteox and Weather Underground which work even when their many trackers are blocked. If you want a blobby forecast instead of doing it youself Weather Online" seem just as good as the met orifice.

must get round to blocking GA

Ghostery + adblock plus.

You will have to turn off ghostery for the new version of the Met office web site. Their new version introduced a few weeks ago won't work unless you are being tracked. The old one was fine

Microsoft to devs: Don't ruin Win 8 launch with crap code

Aye

Pot, meet kettle

World+Dog as likely to view vids on PC as TV

But viewing figures down

I'll tell you why.

Because the content is crap, that's why

AMD: New Trinity laptop chips out-juice Intel graphics

@Alan Edwards

>Proper monitors aren't much better. 27-inch, but only 1920x1080??

It's a major piss-take in my opinion. The Iiyama HM703U crt was 1600x1200 and 17" in 1999.

What is the point?

The bluddy box shifters will only fit toys-r-us screens. Why do they need stonking great graphics ships?

Sony to add full HD display to 15in Ivy Bridge laptop

@dogged

In 'every other article' I have suggested that in this day and age we should be seeing a Miniumum of 1200 vertical pixels, and would expect more than 1500. I had CRT monitors with 1600 vertical pixels at the turn of the century, and >1200 vertical pixels in a 2004 dell laptop.

I really don't think that 1080 is anywhere near enough. On the 15 inch screen that works out at around 147dpi, fractionally less than a Motorola Zoom tablet. The Disgo 8100 tablet, manages 117 and that only costs 99 quid. The Galaxy S3 phone is 306dpi.

Yawn

1920 x 1080 should be baseline. It is not 'impressive' in any known language.

Google shoves cybersquatter off 763 Googletastic domains

can't say 'hoover'

No, but in this context I don't think they'd want to 'suck' them up either.

Sony stock slides to 30-year low after record loss

@unexpected Bill

Yes.

I was loyal to Sony for Analogue electronics: clever, straightforward, mini hi-fi, Trinitron CRT tvs, a car radio/cassette player. All solid, reliable, high quality sound (& picture). Then came the first Sony Tv with teletext/viewdata/whatever it was called that week. I had to have 4 before I got one that worked. They argued all the time that there was nothing wrong.

Then the removal men dropped a 1 year old telly. It was 4 years before the insurers returned it, because of problems with Sony supplying parts.

I'd stopped believing in them long before the rootkit fiasco, although that was when I stopped buying anything, already annoyed by a lock-in policy that covered cameras, audio players, etc.

They made their name with good quality affordable well supported products, Once they had the name they dropped the other 3 things. And I dropped them.

Grab your L-plates, flying cars of sci-fi dreams have landed

How about a car-boat-rocket-plane

Superthunderstingcar! is go!

BOFH: Siri, why do users lie?

Ah, yes.

Welcome back, Simon, it's been too long

Intel plans massive push around touchy-feely Ultrabooks

Re: Open Letter

Dear Mr Intel

Oh really?

Tell you what, you want to call it "ultra" anything, I suggest you up the MINIMUM specs to something with more, well, 'Ultra' in it.

Robert Harvey

Open Letter

Dear Mr Intel

I would have already bought one of your ultratoys to replace my nasty Dell mini with its 600 vertical pixels, were it not for the fact that you hobble your customer's designs to something like 768 vertical pixels.

This is 2012, and I expect something better than the Hercules adaptor I had in my IBM-AT in 1985.

If your ultraslab has a screen resolution of 3000-odd by 1500-odd, I shall beat a path to the first person who tries to sell me one.

Oh, and yes. Mending is right. Some modern connectivity, and how about /built in/ wireless for an external optical disk, using some scheme that leaves the wifi and the bluetooth free. Ability to take phone calls. SD memory card slots (plural, note).

But most of all get us away from these miserable tv-based video standards to something more appropriate for computing.

Yours sincerely

someone who is going to pay for what I want, not what you want me to want.