Posts by Dave 126

Hey Lenovo, want to kill Apple? Look to Samsung hitman for tips

Re: Apple & Lenovo

>In my son words "I hate it when people touch my screen, i don't want to do it all the time, it's rubbish".

I eat my words: I've suddenly decided that I DO want a touchscreen on my laptop... purely so the next time someone prods it whilst discussing whatever its displaying, it flashes up a messages saying "Please don't touch the screen". That is all.

My last boss took a permanent marker to one of his monitors, and he was then surprised white spirit wouldn't shift it. I managed to find a can of deodorant before he laid his hands on his tub of acetone.

Re: Who's the Innovation Leader Now?

Yep: Rather than alienate existing users with a new UI, a la Win8 TIFKAM, Apple just added gestures to the trackpad, and retained keyboard shortcuts, context menus and, shock horror, menus. If you have a application that benefits from prodding a screen (a virtual mixing desk?) either use it standalone on an iPad, or use the iPad as a control surface for a Mac (Wireless MIDI was implemented from the first iPhone onwards).

Apple may yet be shown to be smart in skipping the touchscreen laptop fad if the Leap Motion device is half as good as everyone says it is:

https://leapmotion.com/product (like a tiny finger-friendly Kinect device for £50)

MS were talking about implementing Kinect technology in laptops, but it seems they may have missed the boat to do it themselves... still, it seems they have given thought to integrating this tech with future versions of Windows ("Buy Windows 9: You DON'T have to smear your monitor!")

The Leapmotion forums are an interesting place to have a look at, since they are still collecting ideas and application-specific dev teams.

(I'm not an Apple user, but I like new things implemented well. In the meantime, I'll hold onto my mouse with lots of buttons)

Re: Segmentation and bundling

>buy something cheap and replace the LCD panel.

A link to an Instructables.com tutorial please!

Re: Simle: make a genuinely high-end laptop and people will buy it.

Yep, that would be nice. At the high end, there was the Lenovo w700ds with two screens, a trackpad, nipple, and a Wacom digitiser. I wanted it, but it was never mainstream!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/21/lenovo-thinkpad-w700ds-dual-screen-laptop-details-and-pics-unear/

Ten affordable mid-sized Full HD monitors

Re: No portrait-mode?

>our field of view is wider than it is tall,

Yeah, I was having this argument with a mate who wanted a circular display like he'd seen in some 1960s TV spy series. "But our eyeballs are circular!" he said.

I decided to look it up, and all I found was an old NASA document, with a diagram that looked like the mask film-makers use to denote "protagonist is looking through binoculars" showing sharp areas, with a different shade of grey around the edges to denote more peripheral vision.

They say that the sharpest area we can perceive is equivalent to a thumbnail at arms length, so the solution is clear, gentlemen: We need a small sharp monitor that moves around according to the position of our eyeballs! (Joke, obviously!)

Of course the Xerox Alto had a portrait display, trying as it was to replace the paper office.

Re: Multiples of 1080

1200 vertical pixels is fine for films... you just get black bars top and bottom- not a bad place for your media controls to sit, as it happens.

You are often going to get black bars anyway, because some films are wider than 16:9. Plus, older TV content is more 4:3.

(smug, sat a laptop with a 17" 1920x1200 screen)

Re: Suggestions for next monitor article

I've just being trying to track one down on the net.. about a year ago a brand - can't remember if it were Hanns G or Hanspree or neither- released a monitor that used the same panel as the 27" (or maybe 30") Cinema Display for half Apple's asking price, but I can't find it. It was said to be good, but the backlighting was quite as consistent as the fruity one.

Can anyone jog my memory?

>Ones with win8 touch certification would be a bonus

Consider this, perhaps: Leapmotion.com/product a £50 Kinect-like controller, that traces your fingertips. Just an idea, wait for its release and in-depth reviews.

Anybody had experience of USB-driven monitors? Do they cope with video okay, are they better used for just increasing your productivity real-estate?

I was tempted by a 7" USB monitor for toolbars, but at around £70 I started to thing 'sod it' because 20" wasn't much more.

Nokia chief Elop: 'Android? Hey, anything's possible!'

Re: either

>Unfortunately just like the RX-100, none of these items is a phone so they don't make for a very good comparison.

You're quite right. However, both are on a sliding scale of compactness vs image quality, the optimum compromise along this scale varies for individual users.

There are some people for whom Nokia's Pureview is a suitable compromise along this scale for them, but other people won't mind more bulk if it allows them to take better quality images.

My point was that though the Pureview camera is good, it won't be a 'must have' feature on everyone's phone, especially if they carry a compact camera (side-by-side tests suggest the Pureview more than equal to the LX-5, impressive, but if casual wildlife photography is your thing neither have enough zoom to cut it).

Anyway, I'm still working through a lovely big truckle Godminster chedder at the mo... it ought to be a controlled substance it's that good!

>(but there's an S III Mini just out, so someone is listening)

The SIII Mini isn't just smaller, it has a slower CPU and a lower-res screen besides other things. You'd be forgiven for overlooking that, since calling it the SIII Mini is only going to confuse buyers.

Re: Hmmmm

>Had Nokia gone with Android, they could easily be where Samsung is now - maybe even above and beyond.

Er maybe, but then Samsung make screens, CPUs and memory. I'm sure that has helped them in some way.

Re: either

My Sony Xperia has very good reception, ta, and I live 'in the sticks'. Camera is reasonable, but I usually keep an LX-5 in the car. No complaints. Nokia's top PureView is very impressive, and is an elegant solution to lowlight vs 'zoom', but is so pricey... for less cash you can get a DSLR-sized sensor in a compact camera's body (RX-100).

We have an interest in Nokia because of nostalgic memories of things like the 6210i and dreams of what might have been- they way that Nokia had most of the ingredients needed to bring out an iPhone-like device before Apple did, for example, or a reasonable hard-keyboard.

Sir James Dyson slams gov's 'obsession' with Silicon Roundabout

Re: We have a more fundamental problem to address

Okay, eugenics aside:

Its the same issue- we no longer have the high quantity of agricultural or industrial jobs that traditionally employed the low-skilled. Some people will never be too bright- not their fault, doesn't make them bad people with no feelings- but the bell curve on this issue is something that no politician can point out ("Never call the electorate stupid!"). Instead, New Labour had this strange idea that everyone could be educated into intelligence (it doesn't work that way) and play a part in 'a knowledge economy'.

Rather than just addressing the incentive for the benefits system gives for having more children, we do need to look at why smart women have fewer children- or even leave it too late to have any. The French model is that women tend to have children in their early twenties before embarking on a career- in Britain, women try to reach some threshold level of career advancement before taking a break, and then struggle to get back into it. Economically, I can't work out why childcare is so expensive- surely four women can look after two children as well as one-on-one... I mean, everybody needs to take a toilet break from to time.

Ultimately, designing new vacuum cleaners (or cars, or microwave ovens) to sell to people who already have vacuum cleaners isn't sustainable either.

Bertrand Russell- "The case for a leisure society"

Re: I appreciate some os his arguments, but hes also full of shit....

> It has filters instead of bags.

Bags do act as filters, but they also catch the larger particles of fluff, dog hair, lego blocks etc, a job which in cyclonic vacuum cleaners is done by the cyclone cylinder, not a filter. It is irritating to be using a vacuum cleaner with a bag and then have to stop because the bag is full and the cupboard is bare of spares.

Henrys work well, with a large surface area of 'filter'. It does benefit from being able to take it outside and whack it, though.

Re: When

>robot programmers and skilled engineering technicians

I know one- he troubleshoots the CNC machines that Airbus use. He says he absolutely loves his job.

>who actually build and maintain the assembly lines so much stuff is made on.

And then there is Renshaw based outside Bristol, who make metrology equipment, used in manufacturing when you really need to put a component in the correct place. Privately owned, the millionaire owner is still a hands-on engineer, its the only non-Japanese company to win certain Japanese manufacturing awards, the first company to be awarded Investors in People, numerous Queen's Awards for Industry, it employees engineers, programmers, assemblers, and six full-time patent lawyers, and recently expanded its operation to a massive former-Bosch site in South Wales, for the neurosurgery and dental divisions.

Re: Can we have a Silicon Snowdonia please (or Bangor if you want a university city) ?

I remember being told of 'Silicon Dell' and 'Silicon Glen' during geography lessons in the 90s!

Re: "The billionaire industrial designer, who also invented the blade-less fan"

The latter... but the 're-packaging' took a fair bit of effort. Also, if it were so obvious, why wasn't everybody already doing it? A few companies did try the "Let's copy him anyway, I'm sure he'll run out of cash to defend his patents soon enough" trick, but they underestimated his tanacity (and he sold the design exclusively in Japan for a while, to finance his patent battle). I assume the patents have expired now, since there are dozens of bagless vacuum cleaners on the market now.

I have seen a fair few of the older Dyson cleaners in skips, with broken handles and the like, but not so much the recent ones. (Skip diving: for fun, profit and education!) A mate of mine is building a collection of Henrys that he has found in skips, usually working.

Re: Hypocrite

>emerging economies will soon become self sufficient in designers and engineers.

Very true. We've held on to the design jobs because we are the market for those goods. Now that China is trying to sustain its economy by turning its own citizens into a consumers, we will lose that edge. That said, I can't think of any Chinese companies that trade on their industrial design... even Japanese products are mainly sold as being functional.

Ridiculous: When I was at college around 2000, we were advised to learn German, Hebrew or Japanese... because these countries were the only ones to produce high tolerance tooling for injection moulding. Any industrial designer now should be learning Mandarin.

Of course Dyson isn't responsible for wages being lower in the East. The even bigger question should be "Why is our economy based on limitless growth when we only have finite resources?" The first industrial designers were stage-designers recruited from Broadway... at the time that people first became 'consumers'. Prior to that, things just looked like what they were, and you only bought what you needed (unless you were wealthy and could commission an artisan). To pick on Dyson again:

"Why are they still in business? Surely everybody already has a vacuum cleaner!"

(Mine's a Henry... or a Karcher if it's been raining too heavily)

Re: Hypocrite

>Dyson products are made where, exactly? Clue: it's not in the UK.

No, but after they moved production to Malaysia, they employed more people than they had in the UK, only in higher-paying R&D jobs. Clue: Dyson can't get his hands on enough engineers.

Segway daddy unveils DIY weight-loss stomach pump

Nah, the British bloke who fell off the cliff bought the company IIRC, he didn't found it.

Re: Some people enjoy food more than exercise

You got there before me... The Baron, of course, had a heart-plug like every Harkonnnen except for Sting.

More seriously, one of the fat hairy bikers was on the radio the other day, saying that he had changed his diet, and that it amazing the quantity if medication prescribed to middle aged blokes - statins, wolferin etc - just to allow them to continue in unhealthy lifestyles.

Re: Alternatively...

And then there was an outside visitor to ancient Rome, and he noted by how much the locals talked about constipation and it's opposite. A result of a refined diet on their alimentary canals.

Adobe offers free trip to PowerPC era

Re: Gimp Schmimp

To give GIMP the benefit of the doubt, people say it works better in a Linux GUI than it does it Windows. In Windows, GIMP's tool palettes obscure each other. GIMPshop used to crash on me.

The GIMP won't work with *.HDR or *.EXR files - for that you need a GIMP fork called CinePaint, but that hasn't been compiled for Windows. HDRShop might get you out of jam, but is 'interesting' to use to say the least.

My main issue with the GIMP is that I have never found the equivalent of 'free transform' + hold Ctrl, in order to reposition the corners of the selection rectangle... this is essential if, say, you wish to mock up a 2D design for a cardboard box.

Review: Dell XPS 12 Windows 8 tablet-cum-Ultrabook

Re: Docking Station...

Dunno, maybe someone hit the wrong button.

My laptop has 6 USB 2.0 ports... but sometimes I still want a little hub. Why? Because memory sticks stick out too much, and are easily knocked. The 'nano' receiver is okay, but its predecessor was too big, and had to be removed (and usually mislaid) between home and work.

What I envisaged at the time was a little USB hub within a pouch, that could be tethered to the Kensington lock socket, so my dongles and the like were kept safe and near, yet couldn't damage my USB ports in transit.

Next up: Modify my dummy ExpressCard so that it becomes a safe place to store SD cards. Who needs a 3D printer when you have glue and Duck tape?

(Heck, this laptop has such an abundance of ports and sockets... it must be nearly obsolete!)

Re: Stuff the lack of connectivity... a swivel screen? WHAT?

Yeah, that swivel... my gut instinct is that I prefer the Lenovo Yoga form-factor... nice and simple, fewer moving parts. I have no reason to think that this Dell will fail, though.

Mega-res telly demand to boom, say ball-gazers

Re: Time would be better spent improving gamma and dynamic range.

>At least 13 or 14 stops dynamic range should be the short-term target for digital image sensors so we can enter >the High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) era.

Easily done... just use two cameras and a half-silvered mirror at 45º. You can get cameras such as Canon's C300 that can capture video in situations we can barely see with our own eyes. The correct balance can then be worked out in post production. There was a good video demonstration of this technique featuring a welding torch, HDR'd to the max.

More dynamic range would be good, but I don't think it is necessary to create an image that is indistinguishable from a window, at least for narrative storytelling. Time will tell. Let's see how Peter Jackson's 48fps goes down with film makers and audiences.

Re: Seriously? A million units in 2015?

>These guys are crazy.

You are inummerate:

Capegemini, a financial consultancy, defines a millionaire as anyone with investable assets of $1 million or more – meaning that they actually have over a million dollars as that doesn't include the home in which they live, for instance. By this measure there are about 10 million millionaires on the planet, according to Capegemini and Merrill Lynch.

So even if just 10% of millionaires bought one each, that figure would be about right. You say lack of content? That is is so easy to fix, even with existing media- just use a HDD media server, doesn't matter if individual Blu-rays have to loaded onto it first (the butler can do it). Or, shocker, have a media server with 3 x Blu-ray ROMs, cos at £40 they will really break the millionaire's bank.

All 3D means is that it can go at 120Hz instead of 60 (or 100 / 50 depending on location) and many TVs did this even before the rise of 3D, plus a few pence spent on an IR device to sync the goggles.

If you don't want your new TV to be 3D enabled, just don't buy the glasses. Or poke an eye out, whatever suits you.

content medium

What was that recent Reg article? Oh yeah: If you buy one of Sony's £16,000 TVs they will lend you a HDD-based media server with a few movies on it...

If you wanted to be 80s retro about it, just imagine having a shop in every town, from where you can pick up a couple of movies on HDDs (VHS size, conveniently) on a Friday night, and drop em back Sunday. Blockbuster could see their share price rise, until everybody gets fibre broadband.... Be kind, de frag.... [Meanwhile, back in reality]

Bendy screens are the future, screams maker of bendy screens

Re: I want a roll-out screen like on Red Planet

Branded IBM, I note, just like the tablets in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Was it Red Planet that had really quite stupid 'scientists' before Prometheus made them mainstream, or was that Mission to Mars? I get them confused.

Lt Ripley: Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?

Re: Empty gestures

You forgot:

"Fold into paper aeroplane shape and hope that El Reg SPB don't get their hands on it"

Re: I can think of an application: Dynamic posters for CS Conferences

>In black and white? Dead cool.

I'll think you'll find that many mediums started out in monochrome before progressing to colour... printing (by various methods), photography, cinema, television, computer displays...

Re: Riiiiight

>How about some bendable spoons?

My baby nephew has one... silicone I think, so that whilst being spoon-fed there is no danger of bashing his milk-teeth should he decide to shift his head.

Larger flexible spoons, again silicone, are used for cooking, in particular for scraping the last of the sauce from the bottom of the pan.

Re: "alas"

Exactly, spending money on making a case to house the battery and CPU wouldn't help people to grok the screen tech any better, so they didn't bother.

>Bet Apple and Samsung are crapping themselves - LAUGHING.

Apple and Samsung employ people to look at this, and similar technologies, with interest.

>I guess its time you upgraded your OS to something that can.

AC, "test, don't guess".

I'm not knocking Linux, but suggesting that it is a universal panacea for all IT woes is just unrealistic, and could disappoint people who follow your 'advice', potentially putting them off Linux.

If the websites he visits use Flash, he might run into problems with hardware acceleration, too.

You don't know what other applications he was running, nor did you suggest he try another browser (an easier line of enquiry than installing another OS, don't ya think?) - on older XP machines with 512 MB RAM, I find Opera more usable than Chrome, for example.

I would suggest he get more RAM, but even that can have some pitfalls, depending on his hardware setup (Intel's advice for some issues is to remove the second stick, for example) so I won't.

Would be interesting to know what the minimum bending radius is...

Hey Jai,

No reason these things can't use tabs. Some tasks require concentration on a single screen, some tasks benefit from being able to compare two documents side by side.

Kudos to this company for considering different uses for flexible displays, and not just retrofitting them to existing devices. They could well be wide of the mark, but at least they have put the idea out there.

>Until someone invents bendy chips/boards/batteries, what is the point?

It would allow devices to have a a screen twice the size of their footprint. Mobile phones have been getting bigger, in an attempt to find a compromise between being pocket-friendly yet big enough to use- but these solutions are compromises.

There have been devices such as Nintedo's newsish Gameboys, the Sony Xperia P Tablet and the aborted MS Courier that have a clamshell form-factor but with a bezel between the two screens... having a flexible display would allow a clamshell factor with no bezel.

As a rough guide, it would allow you a 6" 4:3 screen in a device the size of a 4" 16:9 smartphone (very roughly).

Besides, people are working on flexible batteries and circuit boards too!

Big screened quad-core Chinese beasts splash down at CES

Re: Suggestions please!

As if on cue...

I posted the above comment at 12:31. At 13.01 El Reg posts a story about bendy screens!

I would enter smug mode, but have just noticed that I substituted the word 'would' for 'what' in my last sentence above... I must be losing what little of my brain I still have left!

(icon: nearest I could find for 'smug mode')

>"and I still don't understand why we need 3g tablets when wifi will link up to your mobile hapilly.."

Maybe because if you have a 3G tablet for internetty/map stuff, you can just use a clamshell phone with nice big buttons and long, long battery life, and not faff around with a fiddly, expensive smartphone.

For actually talking, the clamshell design is the superior form-factor- the mic is next to your mouth, the speaker is next to your ear, there's no chance of disconnecting the call by touching a soft 'button' with your cheek... Plus, should you lose it whilst drinking, cost of replacement is £35, not £350.

3G is usually an optional extra on tablets, not a standard spec... so why object to it?

Suggestions please!

Okay, okay... It seems to me that until someone develops fold-up displays (in commercial quantities), there isn't going to be anything too interesting in the world of phone. Fold-up (or roll-up) displays would get around the current compromise twixt pocket-size and sausage-fingered usability, like the calmshell-like MS Courier or VAIO P but without the awkward central bezel.

Fellow readers- would sort of innovation do think this sector needs to give mobile devices the 'wow' factor?

Re: Resolution

Being a cheapskate is nothing to with it... anything other than 16:9 is hard to find at any price. If El Reg wants to collect a list of high res / 16:10 / 4:3 laptops, that'd be nice.

It's not just the low pixel density on modern laptops that annoying, it's the aspect ratio. On Windows machines, vertical pixels are eaten up by the task bar, status and title bars, and sometimes a Ribbon like menu bar... not to mention websites with large banners and adverts that require some scrolling before even beginning to read the article. One of the many little irritations of Windows is that the taskbar will unhide at the slightest provocation and obscure the status or tool bar of whatever application you are using. (Another irritation was introducing a ribbon interface at about the same time letter-box displays became the norm... FFS!)

In addition, the centre of a 16:9 screen is is a lower position than that of a 16:10 screen, hardly conducive to a good working position. 16:10 is better but not perfect; ideally, you would have separate the screen from keyboard so that both may be placed in their optimum position... hopefully, time will come that a mobile workstation solution will consist of a tablet, mouse and keyboard- acting as a thin client for CPUs/GPUs sitting in a bag at your feet.

(hoping my old 1920x1200 fantastic plastic Dell keeps on trooping on til that day)

Nvidia takes fight to Sony, Nintendo with Android handheld console

A shame maybe, but Sony never appeared to have the critical mass / virtuous spiral of users and developers. Were Sony to aim for the far more modest goal of making an Android gamepad, and certified 3rd party phones and tablets, they would be on to something. They would have a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

As it is, the Xperia S is compatible with some Sony games on the Android Play store, but my Xperia P isn't.

It was mentioned in passing (in the Lego LOTR game review) but gaming-mouse maker SteelSeries has made a game controller aimed at mobile devices. Unlike this nVidia unit, they seem to have considered the way it would be slipped into bags thus and removed awkward protruding parts.

Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

Just yesterday, I was reading Tomshardware's appraisal of Tegra 3- in short, it aids stability but doesn't really do anything the higher-end ARM devices can't do- so hopefully for nVidia Tegra 4 will raise the bar.

Minicam movie pirate gets record-breaking five years in prison

Re: The solution is to privatise the prisons ..

>ant-terrorism

Phase Four?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/

Desert ants suddenly form a collective intelligence and begin to wage war on the desert inhabitants

'SHUT THE F**K UP!' The moment Linus Torvalds ruined a dev's year

The rules of kernel maintenance:

Rule 1: No poofters.

Rule 2: No member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abos in any way whatsoever—if there's anyone watching.

Rule 3: No poofters.

Rule 4: I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights out.

Rule 5: No poofters.

Rule 6: There is no... rule six.

Rule 7: No poofters.

Oh wait, I think I have the wrong meeting...

Re: Totally reasonable outburst...

My first dip my toes in the Linux waters was installing Mint on an ancient ThinkPad with a mate, for shits and giggles... til that day, I had never even heard of SUDO before. We installed Mint fairly quickly, but getting audio to work took the rest of the afternoon, though to be fair we were complete novices and the internet suggested that model of ThinkPad had slightly esoteric audio hardware.

I'm normally a Windows user, and I take a fairly dim view of its audio system as well. Trying to use ASIO is a PITA cos WSM keeps jumping in, trying to change the default MIDI device requires faffing around in the registry... I only mess around with audio applications for fun; if I had to do it seriously, I would get a Mac without question.

Re: Some are just screamers....

Kelvin McKenzie was well known for his bollockings when editor of the Sun... one hack, after being subjected to a screaming rant for ten minutes asked "Are you going to bollock me now?" and McKenzie creased up in laughter.

And many accounts suggest Steve Jobs was more likely to rage at very well-paid VPs, but took a different approach with junior employees. Didn't the engineer who left the prototype phone in a bar keep his job?

It reminds me in a scene of The Thick Of It, where Malcolm's bulldog Jamie concludes a rant at a minister (using violent sexual imagery) then nearly bumps into a cleaning lady- to whom he courteously apologises to.