* Posts by Dave 126

10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Apple seeks cooling fan patent for iPhone, iPad

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Lost the Plot

You don't just patent things you seriously intend to use... you also patent things that there is an outside chance you might use. You hedge your bets. No-one's crystal ball is perfect, and looking at filed patents doesn't give an idea of a company's plans. A better way of solving the same problem, such as using graphene* for example, may well be developed...we don't yet know, and neither do Apple.

On another note, whatever happened to generating air movement by electrostatic charge from the surface of a chip? It was based on the idea that at a very small scale, air blown over a chip by conventional means doesn't make too much contact with the part to be cooled, due to microscopic turbulence.

*Even better at conducting heat than diamond. Makes copper look like eiderdown.

At last, a bionic arm that passes the Beer, Egg and Looks Cool tests

Dave 126 Silver badge

Good stuff.

There's a fella I know with a false lower leg... again, rather than hide it he often wears shorts, and this thing was CNC-milled from a billet of aluminium, anodised green, and has a shock absorber running up the centre... It looks like it belongs to an expensive motorcycle and pretty darned cool. 'Flesh coloured' plastic never does!

Bargain! Desperate Comet SLASHES price of £4,400 iPod Nano

Dave 126 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Sad

My favourite was telling a Comet sales assistant that "Yep, I'll take that laptop". He immediately starts trying sell me an extended warranty... "Why would I want that?" I ask. He pokes at the back of the screen, sending ripples across LCD and tells me it's not very well made. Muppet.

"No sale!"

Dave 126 Silver badge

Yeah, well - can you think of any reason for the staff member to give a damn at this time? I can't.

Judge drops TV ad-block block: So how will anyone pay for TV now?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Whoa, wait a bit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmViA8zRhLI

BAFTA Television Lecture 2012 - Armando Iannucci takes an optimistic view: since commissioning editors have dropped the ball, the way in which people now consume content has the potential to benefit the creative content creators. For example, over the internet, you don't have to make 25 minute episodes and instead can make each episode as long as it needs to be , a la Fawlty Towers.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Scrolling ads

It's bad enough when, after the poignant ending of a film, some twerp starts jabbering over the credits to announce what's on next.

That, and and the variable frequency of advertisements... the first 40 minutes of the film goes by uninterrupted, but towards the climax of the film there is an advertisement break every ten minutes.

Ah well, the BBC and DVD boxsets cover most of my televisual wants... Channel 4 used to make some gems, but since they not only dropped The Daily Show - but prevented Comedy Central.co.uk from screening full episodes - then screw 'em with extreme prejudice. Oh, and they cut the more risqué jokes from The Simpsons, even when it messes with the continuity.

/end mini rant

On a slightly off but parallel topic - I recently watched the Armando Iannucci Bafta lecture on Youtube, about how US networks have put some brilliant shows in the last decade (when once the US put out 'glittery shit'), and how Britain's commissioning editors have lost their way. Recommended.

HP warns consumers: Don't downgrade Win8 PCs to Win7

Dave 126 Silver badge

Drivers...

Are the most up-to-date hardware drivers available from HP? Fair play to them if they are- some of their competitors don't have the most recent drivers on their website, and users have to hunt down the OEM's site to avoid BSOD.

Apple iPad 4 Wi-Fi only tablet review

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Benchmarks?

Because the first version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (nVidia Tegra) is more powerful than the Galaxy Tab 2. The Note took the top spot in Samsung's line up.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Choice

>Why would I possibly want to run on a machine thats over 7 years old?

Anything that you would have done seven years ago. Email, web browsing, company accounts, storing photographs, editing family videos from a Sony camcorder, Photoshop and Illustrator... a dual G4 PowerMac can do these things without any fuss, and its all near-continuously backed up on a second physical disk.

Not everybody wants to run Crysis (or whatever it is the kids are doing these days).

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Shock Horror

Curiously, Anandtech's benchmarks substantiate it. The latest iDevices are fast. Whether the software most people use needs it to be that fast is a different question.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: How much...

It was a good mini-review. Note that he stated at the start what he did, and what uses he might have for the device. He mentions the direction he is coming from, and some of the hurdles he hit.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: WTF?

I guess that's why Apple Stores just pipped John Lewis and Richer Sounds to the post of offering greatest customer satisfaction in a survey of its readers by the Consumer Association's Which? magazine.

Dave 126 Silver badge
Happy

Re: I expected to read a review....

>I don't see how they [Apple] can keep coming up with stupid names for these things.

Have you ever seen Linux? I'm not knocking it, but its applications have some bloody random names! At least Apple give their products names that hint at what they do. Linux software have names such as: GIMP, Helix, Ogle, Xine, Totem, Gedit, Kate, Gaim, Kopete, XMMS, Noatun, Xine, Grip, Gnome Toaster and Sound Juicer.

And they wonder why the general public hasn't embraced Linux for their desktop. Heck, its usually only biologists and physicist who employ this sort of humour for their naming conventions. My geeky heart approves, but I can see why others might be flummoxed.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: It is truly amazing...

>If Apple let you do all the things you want to then that's not much of an issue... It's a consumer device.

It's horses for courses, Tim... there are things that Windows doesn't let you do, or if it does it makes you jump through some ridiculous hoops first... try changing the default MIDI device on Windows 7, for example, or using more than a handful of ASIO channels.

And as someone who provides informal tech support to an enthusiastic but novice Windows user, I wish that Windows hid its sensitive bits from his clumsy fumblings.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Choice

You are allowed to moan about it, but it doesn't affect the vast majority of users. I've used G4 era machines recently, and though they haven't the latest OSX, they were still snappy and woke from sleep instantly- and were still fit for purpose. Okay, its version of OSX doesn't support all the latest fancy features, but then no seven year old computer would.

I'm normally a Windows user, and know that a seven year old PC would be groaning and lethargic if it hadn't had its OS reinstalled.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I can give it my dad and there is zero learning curve.

>Just for the record, Nexus 7 is not slow and Android is not clunky.

I don't find Android clunky on my phone (Ice Cream Sandwich) but until Jelly Bean it has had significantly higher latency than iOS. For most users this doesn't matter, but for music creation applications it does - they need to hear a note at the same time as pressing a virtual key. Some developers of music creation apps for OSX have now started thinking about Android now that Jelly Bean is here.

This is admittedly a niche use (90% of users happy with internet and videos, perhaps), but then Apple survived the nineties by giving essential features to niche markets, such as DTP or music creation. The latter continued into OSX with its CoreAudio, and features they bought in for DTP (such as FireWire) made them attractive to video editors. Again, fairly niche.

ALIEN DETECTION was SUPPRESSED by the BBC - top boffin

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Is It April the 1st???

Actually yeah, my thoughts turned to Orson Welles doing HG Wells... there has been a health and safety aspect to presenting aliens to an unprepared populace! (people were injured in the panic caused by what sounded like a newscast)

Medical scan record that the NHS says will cost £2k to retrieve: Detail

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Medical equipment, don't make me start...

>Has anyone out there (apart from JLH) ever looked at medical equipment?

Nah, except for when I worked in a broom cupboard (ostensibly the mail room) of an NHS department, there was a massive horizontally mounted tape, probably 1/2", machine of some description, competing for space with my mail sacks. No idea what it was, but the top was cast from a fair bit of alu/mag alloy. They hadn't used it for a long time, nor had they slung it out.

Though yesterday, when looking at the 'Pixar names building after Steve Jobs' article, I read up again on what Jobs bought Pixar for- their hardware division. Apparently they only sold 300 machines at around $150,000 a piece (not including a required $30,000 SGI workstation), aimed at doctors with $2million dollar medical scanners. However, doctors were trained to analyse 2D images and could be sued if they didn't follow this procedure... I got the impression that its storage and formats would be proprietary.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Named Data Subject, Machine-readable Form?

That said, I am left thinking "Mountain ... Mohammed" just send the disk by courier to someone who still has a working drive.

Okay, it might be considered a data risk, but if this gent was reasonable he would waive it- I can't think of anyone doing something nefarious with this old scan data.

Can't people be reasonable?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: WTF

>Why on earth does he think he has the "right" to view his long archived medical scan's?

Er, the Data Protection Act 1984.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Named Data Subject, Machine-readable Form?

What happened to "Any data held about a named data subject in machine readable form must be made available to the data subject for a nominal fee" Data Protection Act 1984 - did this disappear in the later revision?

iPhone maker Foxconn hatching US factory expansion plan?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Sony - because Caucasians are just too damned tall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96iJsdGkl44

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7in Android tablet review

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: It's much more useful...

Anybody know why Black Plague was downvoted?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: This is The Register, right?

>so why not give that a go in a Reg review?

Because those who have the inclination to do that sort of thing know that the internet is their friend, and don't need to be told by a single review whether it is possible. The review suggested that the target market might be composed of Mrs Dabbs (Senior).

Apple screen maker preps 'retina' iPad Mini panel, pants reporter

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Lame

Oh dear 'Obviously!'... There's a village somewhere that's missing its twat.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Any one else going to use these?

>"Not got a look at the nexus 10 yet have you?"

No I hadn't. Whew. Cheers Dana W!

I was primarily thinking of laptop displays though, my inclusion of tablets was a bit of an afterthought.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Any one else going to use these?

Yeah yeah yeah... Any reason why Windows PC or Android tablet makers aren't using retina displays? Heck*, even some more machines 1920x1200 panels would be nice.

(* choice of word both an effort to moderate my language, and a nod to that bloke who modifies/builds computers and games consoles amongst other things)

'iPhone 5 is so easily scratched we just can't get them out the door'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @ Dave 126

>If Foxconn are saying iPhones are too tricky to make then that does imply Apple didn't engineer it sensibly.

You're right. Point taken. However, Apple have little choice to get clever with materials and innovation in order to placate the 'analysts', media and a good number of commentards who moan about the lack of 'innovation' that is no longer possible in a mature sector. Apple's decision to get 'clever' was carefully considered, whereas the eccentric nature of some British engineering has different causes.

Mobile phones are becoming mature products, and advances now are incremental rather than astounding. Many phones these days are packed to the gills with every useful form of radio, sensors, cameras, good screens and over-powerful processors. What else can be fitted into a pocket-friendly form factor, in a way that anyone can operate it? I think the fact that Samsung's Note with a stylus is considered a stand-out tablet only reinforces this.

When Apple made 'Wow!' inducing products, it was by inserting the iconic product into still-youthful sectors, be it MP3 players or PDAs/phones. Being 'first' allowed them some advantages, and they didn't waste a chance to make money.

People who want 'innovation' should no longer be looking at phones or tablets, but at the next mass-market must have device... Something that isn't possible to make economically now, but will be if current advances in processor and battery technology (or sensors, flexible screens, storage or whatever) continue. Google's Project Glass is an example of something that might fit in this category (if it were to catch on in the same way, which is far from certain!)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Easy solution and new "Color" option. Buff off all the anodized finish and..

Burnished aluminium iPhone? Pah! Limited edition of 250, silver-plated Tiffany-co-branded, Sony Walkman housed in a locked teak box:

http://www.stereo2go.com/displayForumTopic/content/284595872989081010

Looking at its accessories, I'm reminded of how many Walkmans and MD players (and not just Sony's) had the nifty screw-on case for an AA battery for when your propriety battery died. Pity that never made it to mobile phones...

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Design goals 101...

>some of RR's best engines were Bristol-Siddeley's - eg Olympus, Pegasus

One of the more entertaining trademark disputes from a few years back... some bloke fitted a RR Merlin aircraft engine to a home made car chassis. The body work was based on a Ford Capri, and he had fitted it with a grill from a real Rolls Royce, until the company complained!

http://www.spainvia.com/merlincar.htm

It does one 1 KM to the litre... rods to the hogshead, etc.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Design goals 101...

Hold on a moment, are you seriously comparing Apple stuff - which if you search for any objective survey of brand reliability consistently rate highly - to 1970s British vehicles? Okay...

Hell, that was the time motorcycle dealers would place a drip tray under British bikes with leaky sumps and quickly whip them under a Japanese bike when a customer approached. Britain once exported left hand drive car with only one door lock- on the right hand door!

You say that Rolls Royce concentrated on the engineering, yet they trained the chauffeur mechanics to never say 'broken down' but rather 'failed to proceed'. What's that if not brand management? Yes, they were beautifully engineered (my mechanic, out of curiosity, tested how long a RR cylinder would keep its compression... absolutely bloody ages*), but that sort of over-engineering is possible if you're charging 400% more than a mass market model, instead of say 20%**. RR have survived not because they were competitive, but because there will always be an ultra rich elite who don't know the meaning of the phrase 'diminishing returns'. Witness the failure of Merc's Maybach in China, where it just wasn't a Rolls.

*His favourite of the vehicles he gets to service is a Bentley Blue Train Racer... nominally a two seater, but has a rear seat at ninety degrees for the butler, who mixes drinks from the integrated cocktail cabinet for the driver and navigator. Fantastic!

**Or, according to Tom's Hardware, next to 0% if built with like for like components, and that's not including the cost of the OS and included software. Exchange rates might have shifted since they wrote that report, but not by orders of magnitude.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Hi, I'm trying to reconcile the headline

'iPhone 5 is so easily scratched we just can't get them out the door'

with the article

Gou... ...wouldn't explain which part in particular was causing the problem

If Anna Leach doesn't write the headline, it doesn't seem fair to saddle her article with it.

Office for Android, Apple iOS: 'REALLY REAL this time' - report

Dave 126 Silver badge

>Bing. (Use that in a sentence.... Dares ya.)

"Clubbing baby seals dance poorly but with enthusiasm"... how's that?

Boffins splash fluids on special soggy biscuits in anti-flood demo

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Volume issue, amongst other things.

The entire concept [of passing comment on something you haven't bothered reading up on] is laughable.

Dave 126 Silver badge

The larger point...

...in the China Today article isn't the bricks, but rather the support the state council has given this business park:

Yang Jianhua, deputy director-general of the Administration of Zhongguancun Science Park, where Qin's company is located, said scientifically innovative companies in the Zhongguancun region achieved 1.96 trillion yuan ($313.6 billion) in sales last year, a 23.2 percent year-on-year increase.

"The government has been trying to establish a platform for the companies to transform their scientific research into real products," he said, adding that big companies including Lenovo, Baidu and Sohu originated in Zhongguancun.

The support has been mandated by the State Council, which has prioritized seven major emerging industries, including energy conservation and environmental protection, biology, IT, and new energies and materials, in its development plan for the 2011-15 period.

The Chinese are looking beyond just manufacturing products for the West.

Pixar names HQ after Steve Jobs

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Truth or fiction?

Fiction: Jobs bought Pixar for its hardware division, which released its first product months after Jobs bought it. The Pixar Image Computer sold for $135,000 in 1986, but it also required a $35,000 companion workstation, aimed at high end scientific and medical applications (3D medical scanning, for example)- by comparison, the first NeXT computer was sold in 1989 for $6,500, aimed at high-end mainstream applications and development.

Pixar sold hundreds of machines (potential buyers thought they'd give Moore's Law a couple more years), NeXT sold tens of thousands.

Apple tries to add Galaxy Note, Jelly Bean to patent slapfest

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Can we just shoot Apple and their lawyers with an Arrow Now?

>I'll NEVER own/use an Apple device as long as I live.

Does that extend to buying a magazine that has been composed on a Mac, or looking at an advertisement that has been Photoshopped on a Mac? Or listening to a band who have used a Mac to record their album? Just wondering.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @ AC 16:21

>phone size bluetooth keyboard for about a tenner

Very, very sensible... back in the day when my phones had physical buttons and keys, it wasn't unusual for them to fail before any other part of the device (on my Nokias, and those of my mates', too). The work around a broken number 6 button was to copy an existing contact that contained enough 6s, then edit the numbers around it!

Having the most common point of failure (the keyboard) replaceable is no bad thing.

Microsoft mulls 'Xbox Surface' slate for games

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Purpose?

> [ Internet, Media, Messaging] then that's all the common tablet functionality covered anyway.

Fair point, well made.

However you mention the existing 'tablet functionality'... software aside, a tablet plus optional keyboard is effectively a laptop. And on the software side, MS is hoping many applications will be written for RT since it works on full fat Win 8 as well.

Mine was just a nagging thought- will they offer two tablet at a similar price - one with a gaming bias, one the RT with Office variant, or do they charge more for a version that does everything a vanilla RT model does plus games (same tablet, beefed-up graphics)? Basically, MS are already confusing people with 3 versions of of Windows 8 - phones, RT, full fat... and to offer a 3rd flavour of tablet isn't going to help: "I bought this for at Christmas for little Johnny to play Halo, what do you mean he can't do his homework on it?" etc.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Control

>Agreed. This problem has been the bane of hardcore games phones for years

Hehe, I used to have a little plastic joystick which clipped over the keypad of Nokia phones (mine was a 3210i, but it came with a selection of panels to fit various positions of Nokia's 'double triangle' indentations) for the purposes of playing Snake.

(I wasn't that massive a Snake fan, its just that it was just £2.99 and I was feeling rich that day)

That said, I've been thinking of a multi-touch version of Cannon Fodder or Syndicate for a week or two now- though your point about 'not being able to see the screen' remains valid. We can all think of plenty of games that can work well on a touch-screen (Sim City, Sam and Max Hit The Road, Monkey Island, Command and Conquer, The Incredible Machine) - shit, I suddenly feel old- but I don't think they satisfy your definition of 'hardcore'. ( :

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Xbox games on PC

> If Microsoft would make a PCIe adapter which contains any necessary chips to be able to put Xbox discs in my PC and play them

Haha, like the Amstrad Mega PC, then? PC and Megadrive in one!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC

3DO is another example of the same concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DO_Blaster ... An add on card for your PC to play games for 3DO consoles.

That said, some better integration would be nice. No reason why a PC shouldn't run the level-editor for an XBOX-exclusive title such as Halo, for instance. MS already have some integration between the Windows Live games and the XBOX Live service (messaging, for example).

> MS is already supposedly making a PC version of the Kinnect, and I heard it was better

They do. It isn't better, but has been retuned for smaller distances so works better with hands than the entire body. It is more expensive, since it isn't being subsidised by software (games) sales, but is essentially the same hardware. I'm still waiting for productivity software (I'm a CAD user) to catch up with it, though a few people have made some proof-of-concept demonstration software. I would be interested to see if someone could use it to translate deaf-signing into written text.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Purpose?

Really REALLY serious gamers sit opposite their opponent across a wooden chess board.

It is possible to be a casual gamer who fancies a quick bout of Tekken or MicroMachines. We did have more than twenty years of joysticks and gamepads being nearly the only control option for action games.

Though your definition of 'casual gamer' seems to be (not unreasonably) 'someone who hasn't bought specialist hardware', the term was first used to describe people playing on the Nintendo Wi.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Well, MS have had fun in the past making mice that change shape for portability (the Arc mouse)... maybe they'll try the same for a game controller. Slinging a full-fat mouse and PSU into a chunky laptop bag is no problem, but tablets seem to live in more svelte cases.

A few things: Interesting that MS are making this tablet dedicated to gaming, when the trend has been to use general purpose mobile devices for gaming, despite compromised control schemes.

Despite that trend, no big player seems to have really made an effect towards mobile gaming on a general purpose device; Apple already sell enough devices not to have to bother, Sony have bought PSP games to Android devices but have been limited in the hardware they support, trying to keep the party to themselves.

Curiously, you can use the PS3 gamepad on any PC with Bluetooth (with 3rd party software) or Android device (ditto). To use a wireless MS XBOX controller on a PC requires an extra hardware dongle from MS.

GPU-powered Chrome lets you watch YouTube longer

Dave 126 Silver badge

Curious headline

Chrome uses its built-in Flash player for Youtube, and that has had hardware video acceleration for a few years now. That said, I have noticed that it has been broken recently, resulting in high CPU in full-screen video. No big problem, another browser is just a click away.

If we didn't have all these flash adverts, I don't think my browser would accelerating. When it comes to Flash, my views echo that of the late turtle-neck guy, along with menus and laptop screen ratios.

Apple engineers 'pay no attention to anyone's patents', court told

Dave 126 Silver badge

>But Apple developers testified that they didn't pay any attention to anyone’s patents when developing their system.

I dunno, but as a rough simplification, I'd expect it to be the engineers' job to create a solution by whatever means, and the job of management and legal to procure the rights to use those means. Otherwise, the engineers would have to get skilled up in law and corporate negotiation- areas outside their 'core competency'.

Fujitsu guru: Win 8 will triumph. And we'll have brain plugs in 2027

Dave 126 Silver badge

Where's my...

Ono Sendai deck?

Surface more profitable than iPad

Dave 126 Silver badge

>for it to be profitable they have to convince people to buy it !

Exactly, the headline completely ignores the cost of R&D and the cost of setting up tooling and production. Since these costs can be shared across all devices sold, the iPad remains more profitable.

In the loop: how Halo defined a new decade of first-person shooters

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Pretty much the only FPS I've played

Bungie are on record for saying they were more inspired by Larry Niven and Iain M. Banks (amongst others) than they were by movies. Anyone with half an imagination who has read 'Consider Phlebus' will see why they choose to read books rather than watch movies, limited as they are by SFX budgets and running lengths.

That said, the upcoming FPS Aliens: Colonial Marines (with input from Fox, Syd Mead, and Ridley Scott) looks to be pretty good, though its game modes suggest some strong influence from Left 4 Dead.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What he said

>Halo just scraped a few bits from various PC shooters, stuck em together in a cliched sci-fi environment and marketed it at 10-year olds.

It didn't merely 'just scrape' previously seen elements, it carefully combined and polished them.