Posts by Dave 126 10844 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
>Shirley the only protection they can have is Copyright
@Mage. If you had actually read the patent before commenting on it, you'd see that it outlines a manufacturing process for a novel form of enclosure that is composed of a thermoplastic spine and CFRP laminates. That is firmly in Patent territory, not Design Copyright.
Read the thing you're commenting on, otherwise you risk looking like a tit. (Not that anyone here would notice, they haven't read it either)
>Yeah, because a laptop case is the cutting edge of carbon fibre lay up. I can't help thinking the F1 and aircraft industries are looking at it and thinking it's all a bit last century.
@SkippyBing... even if you are using the same materials, the processes you would use for a F1 cars and aircraft would be different to consumer devices. F1 cars are hand-built in very small batches. Consumer goods often in the hundreds-of-thousands. If you used well used, tried and tested F1 and aerospace CF laying techniques to make consumer goods, you would go bust.
Additionally, a small device case is very different to F1 car parts- its function is to protect its contents. Carbon fibre in a F1 car is mostly designed to shatter. Had you actually tried to read the patent, you'd note that it isn't a homogenous square box with rounded corners. The corners an edge are a different material to the main back- if you knew anything about carbon fibre, you would know why this is.
Yes, you can make a laptop out of carbon fibre. You can't patent the concept making a laptop out of carbon fibre. You CAN patent a way of using the carbon fibre to make the form you require, if it is novel.
Apple's patent is NOT for 'any case made of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic'. Rather, it outlines a very specific design, and how it might be manufactured.
Which would be, as you say, 'blindingly fucking obvious' to you had you chosen to read the patent before expressing outrage at it.
@Efros, Martin Gregorie, and AC:
You give the impression you haven't even glanced at the patent application before commenting on it. You're not alone; this is currently very common behaviour amongst Reg commentards, but I have no idea why people upvote you for it.
The patent is NOT for 'any case made of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic'. Rather, it outlines a very specific design, and how it might be manufactured. The language is bit dense, but two materials are involved, and several processes. Carbon fibre reinforced plastic is not suitable for edges and corners- it can chip and fracture quite easily, so that place is taken by the 'spine' the patent refers to. The spine also acts as former during manufacture, and is then bonded or fused to the CFRP layers to form a whole that won't separate with thermal cycling.
@Efros- Just because people have used cardboard boxes in the past doesn't mean you can't innovate and make a cardboard box better suited to your purposes- and then patent it if it is non-obvious. Have you never heard of Tetrapak? Have you not seen those flat-packed cardboard wine boxes in supermarkets (the ones that unfold into six compartments and a handle)? What about the cardboard storage boxes that don't require tape to assemble, and the tops fold over to reinforce the handles? Not only did these shapes have to be considered, but also the process which makes them.
What is it that you have against the designers of cardboard boxes and manufacturing processes? Any reason you feel they shouldn't be rewarded for their efforts?
There was a recent Sky at Night episode about amateur astronomers past and present who had built their own observatories. Archive footage of Patrick Moore visiting observatories in the 1950s, and a present-day tour by hos protégée around the UK comparing urban and rural amateurs. One bloke, a German fellow who had adopted Blighty as his home, even ground his own mirrors.
I've just listened to the Media Show on Radio 4 (the other story covered was Keith Allen on drugs on Channel 4, shock horror) and the Guardian spokesman didn't make a convincing case, with large gaps in their plan just glossed over- such as, who decides who gets the cash?
Maybe a universal micro-payments scheme could work. But instead of buying the 'album', might people just buy the 'single'? I.e pay 50p a month to read the Steve Bell cartoon, and not bother with the rest of the newspaper.
I think we've had some Spectrum titles in ACR. I'm sure one find more console-heavy nostalgia trips else where on the net.... (what machine first hosted Solid Snake? Which game first featured Sonic the Hedgehog?)
My vote is for Time Bandits on the Atari ST, has nothing to do with the Terry Gilliam film. I downloaded the PC version recently, but it has a bug that stops you shooting (quite a big bug for a top-down shooter!). It could be played two-player co-op, and if one player died, they could accompany the other player as a ghost.
According to one nurse, patients often give the story "I was getting out of the bath, when I slipped and fell on X and it went up my..." only to tell a different as the aesthetic kicks in before the procedure to remove the foreign object. The only bloke who stuck to his story when going under had a tennis ball (?!) stuck where it shouldn't be.
I did like the way the Google Play store placed 'Fifty Shades' in its 'For you' list... Based on what? All I had done on the Play store was to look at and download some Android games and apps that would be suitable for pre-teens, and yet it recommends Fifty Shades of Grey to me!
Why would you have people ignore him? He occasionally says things that aren't just the party line of a corporation (and is not overly convincing when he is repeating PR copy). Whether his ideas or reservations are right or wrong is irrelevant, since they can cause discussion. No one is jump off a metaphorical cliff at his say so, or buy kit without first doing their homework.
He also stands as an example as someone who is in the industry because he genuinely enjoys making and messing around with technology, rather than just for the money. Some people might think a happy man is a better role model than a rich man.
> there are no killer apps that are Android-only
Like DTP in a previous decade, iOS has a certain niche of software that Android can only now begin to enter with 4.1 Jelly Bean- those that require low audio latency. This is why there are a fair few audio applications that are only available on iOS at present, though previously iOS-only developers have expressed an interest in Jelly Bean and beyond
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1777261 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/07/android-high-performance-audio-in-4-1-and-what-it-means-plus-libpd-goodness-today/
Oh, and it seems that Microsoft hasn't learnt this lesson with Win8 RT:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/06/music-developer-on-windows-8-a-leap-forward-for-desktops-a-leap-backward-for-metro-winrt/
You, erm, know that Distributions and Operating Systems aren't are different things? This being... etc etc
The distinctions can appear blurred to the casual user if the software bundled on the device at launch cannot be removed and integrates itself with other applications. It is usually stuff bolted on to Android by manufactures that people consider make a 'non-vanilla" Android distribution.
Thanks for your input, guys!
The 3G>WiFi hotspot device seems the best solution -and has advantage that it would allow his conventional laptop to work, should his home broadband play silly buggers.
Using a phone to put out a WiFi network - not an unreasonable idea, but a bit fiddly and requires a fancyish phone to begin with (a clam shell phone works well for him, ergonomically). I have tried the WiFi Hotspot on my phone, and it doesn't always work (tested with laptop, sometimes okay. Tested with Galaxy Tab, doesn't connect... I can't rule out user error though!).
Hopefully, a purpose-made 3G>WiFi hotspot device will be more reliable than trying to get a phone to do the same thing.
--- The pen suggestion is an interesting one, and may suit some. The fella I'm thinking about is a retired teacher, so is used to using computers, but has probably left PC maintenance in the past to the IT department. Configuring WiFi or Bluetooth is rapidly approaching the 'too much faffing around' limit compared to an integrated device.
>...but the less you have hanging of the bottom of a tablet the less likely it is to fall off and/or get damaged
I would rather have something flexible (a short cable) hanging off the bottom of my tablet than something rigid. The rigid item is more likely to get damaged, or damage its port. Compare a 3" length of string to a toothpick...
>Note that the micro-USB the device already has seems to be a slave port, not a host port, so you couldn't connect a peripheral to it.
Yes you can, it is the same port. If your table detects that pin 4 is shorted to pin 5 (ground) in your microUSB plug, your tablet will switch to host mode. This site explains it better than me, it has pictures:
http://tech2.in.com/how-to/accessories/how-to-make-your-own-usb-otg-cable-for-an-android-smartphone/319982
"Some high-end Android phones and most of today’s Android tablets support USB OTG (On-The-Go)"
on why 3G versions of tablets cost around an extra £80-100? I'm looking for a good value, but very usuable, 10" tablet with 3G. It doesn't have to have shed loads of memory, or the best 3D graphics. It is intended for an old boy who doubts the dexterity of his fingers and acuity of his eyesight, but is turned on to the uses of (fiddly) smartphones. Maps, travel times, emailing family, cricket scores, BBC website etc. Any ideas?
Is 600 grams (1.3 lbs in old money) too heavy to hold in one hand for too long? Does extra resolution make any difference with poorer eyesight, or does the clearer text help?
I would like to hear from any more senior Reg readers or their technology consultants family members about their experiences with tablets.
Seconded. A USB OTG cable is preferable to having an integrated female USB A port because having a rigid stick protruding from a handheld gadget is a good way of physically breaking something. Even on a conventional laptop, USB thumb-sticks can look a little vulnerable.
However, to excuse Dajames, USB OTG isn't a feature that is not often reported upon, and the cable is rarely included with devices or available on the highstreet (not even Maplins at their prices... £8.99 for a USB A > B cable? WTF?)
>I shake hands with my friends. They are real people.
Fair does. But that was also true of a pre-Facebook 20 year-old who would spend several nights a week attending gigs and going out with their friends. Myspace helped them in that real-life activity.
Myspace could be an aid to real social contact, it wasn't trying to be an alternative to it.
Myspace was primarily used for unsigned bands promoting their music. They are not always the most technically minded of folk, and time spent learning about HTML and FTP is time not learning guitar chords. Musicians already had real world 'networks', comprised of the acts they shared gigs and tours with, for example. Hyper-linking between artist's Myspace pages wasn't an unreasonable way to explore new music. It worked fairly well. Unlike Jakes 'build your own' approach, there was a merit in having the pages all laid out in the same way, using the same audio player controls etc.
He must be tired, its not the hardest thing to grok.
>I suspect they could also do the same thing in transparent sapphire (which is quite cheap)
I smell a new gimmick for overpriced wristwatches coming on.... "You never actually own a Patek Philippe.... you merely look after it for the next generation." 40Mb is plenty to record a family tree and a few photos, the data stored on the watch's crystal.
>But if one is optimist, the readme problem could be solved by carving a binary->ASCII table on stones left near the archives of these glass records
A good start, but I can't help feeling that any storage site would be missed, for the million other monuments to our vanity that we have built. Why look for glass sheets when you have the remains of cathedrals, shopping malls and power stations to pick through?
Arthur C Clarke's answer was to have a technological hurdle- 'you've got to make it too the moon'. We might consider parts of Antarctica, too, such as those extremely dry valleys if not the actual South Pole. Left there would be instructions for finding more accessible, larger and duplicated data stashes elsewhere in the world. If you advertise these stashes too readily, you run the risk of 'grave robbers' (or cultural revolutionaries!) getting there before scholars. Perhaps mixing the plates with radioactive waste might be a way of both advertising them, and deterring the wrong people at the same time.
In reality, I think the applications are going to be a bit more domestic- people today looking to leave family records and photos to their grandchildren. You could also imagine these integrated into gravestones, so that they can be read with a portable device once the moss has been wiped off. If we can the data to last a few hundred years, later generations can work on it lasting thousands.
This isn't a new material they have developed, its 'just' quartz. As such, it is the same material that has passed details of the dinosaurs down to us... hundreds of millions of years after the event.
Plastic optical media is untested over mere decades, magnetic media too easily corrupted by magnets and in any case gets eaten by mould.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_quartz
What Richard 81 said.
>...due to the relative cost of getting a half-decent one.... I would say, anecdotally, that the Android phone owners I know are more technically minded than the iPhone owners. Take from that what you will.
I'm not taking anything from it, except to think about the disposable income of people who grew up with technology (at least using a PC routinely in secondary school, say born after 1976) and the disposable income of those who grew up to see the transistor radio become the thing. The latter group will have been working for longer, and are more likely to have paid off their mortgage, one assumes... the former group have, from a young age, been used to games consoles, computers, mobile phones, graphing calculators, digital watches, proverbial VCRs etc, and are usually confident that they can persuade any new gadget to do what it is intended to do.
... Douglas Adams of H2G2 fame, and friend of Mr Fry, was also a massive Apple fan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Technology_and_innovation
Okay, that's citing Wikipedia, but his dead-tree book The Salmon of Doubt gives the same impression, being as it is a collection of past essays and documents trawled from his hard-disk.
Mr Fry gets the mickey taken around here, DNA (in Cambridge before Crick and Watson) is held in more esteem. Just saying.
Having a bigger phone with a bigger battery... isn't that effectively what you get by putting a battery-case on an iPhone? Okay, there are enough units sold of each iPhone to justify 3rd parties to make add-ons for them... making custom (battery) cases for other phones might be a suitable reason for every town to have a 3D printing bureau (that, and printing spares for washing machines etc).
What I feel from looking at the battery packs featured in this article is that they all leave you with a cumbersome lump, two devices inelegantly joined by a cable... not convenient for actually using your phone during charging, or quickly stowing away. I'm assuming that these devices are used on planes, trains and in cafes (ie, not at home, in the car or office), and they could all be improved by incorporating a suction-cup to keep the phone attached during charging.
(A suction cup probably isn't the ultimate solution, but is just to show these things could be easily improved)
>Did you hear they've just found some old bit of paper which mentions Jesus having a wife?
Been done. It was mentioned in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which was mentioned by Umberto Echo in the excellent Foucalt's Pendulum and ripped off wholesale by Dan Brown inThe Da Vinci Code, leading to a lawsuit.
Since it would have been unusual for a Jewish man in JC's time not to be married, it is strange that it is not remarked upon in the NT, was the argument. That, and who was it getting married at Canaan? I know many women who would consider a man capable of turning water into wine prime marriage material!
http://www.luxury-insider.com/luxury-news/2012/05/object-of-lust-hermes-leica-m9-p-edition
Paul Smith is known for his textile designs, and his contribution was, as noted, cosmetic. This is a Hermes edition M9, with styling by Walter de Silva, the man responsible for the new-look Audis and VWs. Curiously, he has chosen to remove the hot-shoe.
I link to this because it suggest Jony Ive might have more input than simply choosing the colour of the camera. Ultimately, I don't see him changing the function in drastic way. Bear in the mind the object is not to produce a photographic device; the object is to part a rich person from their money in the name of charity, mutual back-slapping and brand advancement.
I look on with amusement. My toys are all black ABS, powder-coated steel and anodised aluminium.
Panasonic don't make equivalents to these Leicas... however, Sony are seeking to rival the Leica 'Rangefinders' with their RX1 - a big, full frame image sensor in a compact body and fixed 35mm f/2 Zeiss lens for $2800. I don't know how it compares, but maybe one to look into if you'e in the market for such things.
John Ive has always given credit to Dieter Rams, and Dieter is fine with that. So whats the issue?
"I have always regarded Apple products – and the kind words Jony Ive has said about me and my work – as a compliment. Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. - Dieter Rams
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-Rams-Apple-has-achieved-something-I-never-did.html
Apple laptops are 16:10, even the non-'retina' models. Apple didn't 'innovate', they just didn't follow the herd by fitting 16:9 panels like almost everybody else did. Good on 'em.
For two laptop displays of the same area, more of a 16:10 display will be closer to your eyeline than that of a 16:9 model. At least with the advent of 'laptops with removable keyboards' there will be more scope for arranging the keyboard and monitor more ergonomically. Anyhows, I'm preaching to the choir here.
[sent from my 16:10 Dell]
@ 08:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
http://www.interpromodels.com/services/dmls-direct-metal-laser-sintering/
Gives details of materials (including titanium, aluminium and steel alloys), specifications, and also applications as end-use parts in aerospace.
"...for a new engine coming out next year, GE is planning to print them [jet engine parts] in cobalt-chrome."
" including 32 different [printed] components for its [Boeing's] 787 Dreamliner planes."
As for jet turbine blades... Rolls Royce blades are a single crystal of titanium (temperature controlled lost wax casting), so I wouldn't expect 3D printed blades to be as good. For a model aircraft engine though, you wouldn't be as concerned about strength/weight/safety.
I'm with you, Conel... RP was my dissertation subject more than ten years ago, and I still can't think of a convincing end-use that justifies the hype it has attracted in the last few years (with no real advance in technology).
Objects are usually better if mass produced (the tolerances of injection-moulded parts are incredible) and if you want to customise an object for a person (a hearing-aid, for example) taking a direct cast of the body part is usually the better option.
Obviously the hobbyist / designer part of me is excited by this stuff, and I can identify a few niche applications for the average household (see tumble-drier door latch, above) but nothing that would really justify everybody owning one. I'm hoping to be proved wrong, though!
Something to keep an eye on is the printing of body parts or very small items... but again, these are not consumer applications!
http://www.photomodeler.com/products/pm-scanner.htm
I had a play with the demo, but didn't have need enough to get to grips with it. You need to print out some sheets with which to calibrate your camera, since it need to correct for lens distortion. Modelling humans (or any moving subject) works better if you use several calibrated cameras at the same instant. A few low-end Canon compacts would probably do the trick, since there is a low-cost hardware hack that allows shutter release through their USB ports.
An alternative if you want a 3D scan of your head are those people who set up stalls in shopping centres offering a 3D model of your head made by forming bubbles in a cube of glass-like resin. The laser scanner they use outputs *.XYZ files, literally a CSV file defining 3 co-ordinates for each point in 3D space - ask nicely and carry a USB stick. The easiest tool I've found for creating a surface from this 'point cloud' is the 'drape' command in Rhino (trial version allows 20 saves).
Otherwise, full power to the Kinect hackers. The Reg has a real stuffed vulture. The Reg can borrow a Kinect I'm sure. Maybe the Reg can attempt to make a 3D scan of their bird of choice and publish an account of their efforts?
http://www.renishaw.com/en/affordable-dental-cad-cam--6157
Dental is only one field Renishaw work in, having grown out of metrology in the aerospace industry. They are probably most famous for their ruby-tipped contact probes, for measuring turbine blades and the like, but are moving into surgical robots.
Autodesk Inventor Fusion is available as a free (as in beer) download, in the form of a technology preview:
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion
This is representative of the new movement in CAD, the combination of Parametric (think drawing board, or Mechano) and freeform modelling (think clay). Previously, people would shunt models back and forth between packages such as Solidworks and Rhino.
It expires for PC users on 1st April 2013, no date specified for OSX. It is the first of the big CAD players to produce a Mac version, an interesting development.
And in other news, Stratasys (3D printers) and HP are parting company, without the collaboration bringing any dramatic reduction on the price of the machines. My old school's first laser printer, an Apple, cost them £5000... I was hoping HP might get the unit cost down to that sort of price.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stratasys-and-hp-to-discontinue-manufacturing-and-distribution-agreement-2012-08-01
http://dev.forums.reprap.org/read.php?148,7458,7458
This might help, a discussion on the open source 3D printing site RepRap about the very question you ask. They are talking about 'Bronze Clay', particles in bronze suspended in a binder. After modelling (usually by hand) the 'clay is placed in a kiln to give you fairly dense parts. A silver version is also available.
Even these guys haven't found a way to print the material directly, you could print your self a mould. Your shapes would be limited by the usual mould design considerations, except you could consider your mould to be expendable.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
