Posts by Rampant Spaniel

Review: Acer Aspire P3 Windows 8 slate

Re: So far

With a 1080 screen I would agree with you. I'm also still wary of the battery situation. I get that they aren't user replaceable but I'd like a guaranteed way of replacing the battery as 18 months down the line it's likely to be pretty knackered. It's one thing binning a cheap android tablet due to the battery, but a 600 squid slate? Plus the first time anything else goes (ram \ ssd) you are stuffed. Same for a 200 quid droid tab, but it's a third of the cost. Perhaps I'm just showing my yorkshire roots :-)

Does ubunutu have an unattended install option?

Re: caps lock indication

it's also a twat when typing passwords :-)

MYSTERY Nokia image-mangling mobe spotted in public

Re: EOS

fwiw I think canons use ti designed arm chips running dryos. They will have a significant amount of custom functionality, but basically not a million miles away from whats in a phone. Some canons have multiple digic processors (i think my 7d has 2 and my 1dx has 3? ). One big factor that will affect the grunt required would be the bit depth, they're probably 8bit. It's also unlikely the phone will be doing much else at the time. That and the burst depth is rarely high on a phone so it is unlikely to have a queue of images to chew on like a dslr. Plus it depends exactly how they are reducing the resolution, it could be done right after the adc stage by an asic prior to the phones cpu even getting the image. Are there any specifics on how the pureview did it?

Re: EOS

I mentioned the canon eos before and was told that it was only bloggers who were using the term, I guess el reg is now. I don't believe nokia have used it.

Exactly, there is underlying physics involved. As sensor size changes you are trading off and balancing factors such as pixel pitch \ gain \ dof at a given ap \ fov at a given focal length \ diffraction (coc) etc. A lot also depends on where money has been put in each system. Digital large format is virtually solely scanning backs used for landscapes, cameras are huge, lenses are actually pretty light considering the image circle involved. Medium format means you have lighter cameras, moderate lenses, you start getting af and even IS now. They also tend to be ccd rather than cmos so you find yourself overshooting, dealing with 1fps max normaly but true 16bit. 35mm tends to be cmos so you get liveview, higher isos faster frame rates (although sensor size is part of that) etc. Inpart due to the physics of the medium but also because thats what manufacturers built. You could have an 8x10 digital slr with IS AF lenses but it would be huge and insanely expensive and smaller fov lenses with wide aps would be monumentally HOOOge.

Camera sensors win on convienience, theyre starting to get IS and even optical zoom. Diffraction will play a part with clarity and forget thin dof, but I won't complain about them improving :-) Horses for courses, but don't believe the whole 'takes dslr quality shots' marketing balls. I'd happily switch away from insanely expensive and heavy gear if they did.

Raspberry Pi DUMBS DOWN to target world+dog

@LarsG

I assume you never learnt to drive growing up on a farm in yorkshire :-)

Otherwise you are perfectly correct. If the Pi is intended to help people learn then by definition people will start with a lack of knowledge. Giving people the option for differing levels of help is not a bad thing. Forcing it on them would be, but some people would be put off by a steep learning curve, others wouldn't, hence the choice.

Boffins develop 'practically free' sulphur-powered batteries

Re: Baked

I had a look when they announced them but they're 30-60k! Thats rich even by duke standards. Hopefully we will continue to see advancements like this and benefit from sanely priced electric vehicles with decent ranges. Couple that with more fission \ fusion and renewables and we should have a decent proposition!

Technology like this hopefully will help electric cars fulfill their potential (and actually be environmentally and financially friendly as they are neither now, not to mention range). Coupled with sustainable clean power generation this could be just what's needed! If they can be made cheaply enough and light enough to swap out or have a fast recharge time there's real potential here. Would love to see this make its way into a superbike.

Amazon to deliver groceries in 20 markets by 2014

Not to piss you off further ;-) but they rock. They aren't expensive, at least not big picture expensive. Some of their stuff is a little more but they have some awesome fresh produce which lasts a lot longer than stuff from asda \ tesco and some stuff thats hard to get elsewhere (fresh dijon mayo for example). Nice to only have to shop every week or two rather than twice a week because the 'fresh' stuff kept going rotten.

Used to love waitrose (occado or some silly name) delivery service in the UK. About time things caught up here.

iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent

monsanto and others do the same, they're all for sale.

Re: Er..umm

That and possibly if apple rejected a potentially fair frand offer they are entitled to a second frand deal. I can see the logic in saying if you reject a frand deal and later lose in court you pay more. samsung still have to allow them a license but the cost is what's up for debate.

Personally I feel frand needs to go a step further and there be mandatory patent pools for each standard. That way everyone gets fair pay for their IP and theres no ridiculous bitch fights over obscure patents needed for a standard. if its in the standard its in the pool. What pisses me off about all this is that we are paying for it. The next phone you buy is paying for this sideshow which just serves to unduly enrich ambulance chasing scum.

Re: Part Deux...

Didn't they just soft announce one of the next product refreshes would be made in the usa? Not shocking they would do it either, the US still has a huge manufacuring industry it just uses far less people due to automation.

On the cynical aspect of your post I couldn't agree more!

Irrespective of who is actually right doesn't the entire system lack credibility when different organisations deliver opposing decisions? I have no beef with samsung or apple but from casual observation the 'system' appears to be a joke, corrupt or just not fit for purpose. They infringed or they didn't, not both.

Facebook's Sean Parker fined $2.5m for tasteless eco-trashing wedding

Re: So that's why..

at least CC occasionally does something! dlnr in hawai'i is fecking useless. Call them about someone illegally netting a bay and you get to leave a voicemail.

Steelie Neelie: Crack down on wicked ISPs so we can Skype

True, but not unlike the American gm corn farming industry.

No but when you buy a carton of milk you buy it outright at a cost that reflects it's production costs plus profit etc. Ask your ISP for a 50mb leased line and see if its the same price as a contended 50mb cable connection, I doubt it. I think she misunderstands some of the situation.

Net neutrality is important and some network management is prudent i.e. at times when there is congestion (and only then) prioratising time sensitive packets make sense. As does upgrading the capacity when that happens. Blocking or degrading voip or streaming video because it's eating your bottom line isn't ok. Telco and cablecos seriously need to wake up and realise that rather than trying to kill hulu and skype et al they should compete. Some people still want a linear service for tv and thats fine, but folks have also tasted on demand streaming from a decent catalog. If they got their heads of out their behinds and built a new product, say 40-60 bucks a month, on demand, a decent ad free (hulu I'm looking at you) catalog of current HD tv and film then I would happily pay it and they would still get their money. Try and degrade netflix and I switch isp's. The regulator still needs to act for those unable to switch though.

Ecuador: Let's talk about not having Julian Assange on our sofa

Re: Reality

Cost of keeping JA in gitmo, $900k a year.

Cost to the US of him being holed up in the embassy. 0.

Cost to the US of him being in a Swedish prison. 0.

I think they are probably quite happy with the status quo. Cut down the cost of monitoring somewhat and watch the little bugger sweat it out until his new friends as sick of him. Maybe sell a feed of the security cameras as a reality tv show bb style.

Re: A lotta donuts

True, it's more like 1 hour watching and 7 hours trying to submit the report via the govt procured iplod-app-pad. Assuming theirs functions as well as the one the poor community nurses have to suffer.

Landfill Android devices set to get 4G, courtesy of Qualcomm

Re: Plesase stop using the term 'Landfill' android

Sorry you are mistaken. Iphones don't end up in a landfill. Gabriel himself assists them ascend to a higher plane of existance. Nothing an iphone does is as mundane and unmagical as being thrown in the trash.

Joking aside it would be interesting to see if iphones ended up in landfills less often (or rather had a longer life before heading there). I have a hunch they get donated to rellies or sold more often than android phones. I use android myself but it always seems like when an iphone is due to be replaced theres a queue of cousins wanting it yet when an android phone gets retired it is consigned to a desk drawer.

Twitter, Facebook are 'a MENACE to society', says Turkey's PM

Pot, Kettle, noir?

Now beaming live from Pyongyang: NORKSCASTS!

Re: Getting their TV is actually comparatively simple

Our HOA would just love you :-)

EU boffins in plan for 'more nutritious' horsemeat ice cream

Re: Using as much of the slaughtered animal as possible,

25 years growing up on a farm, working on farms and the dictionary says that is indeed correct :-)

Re: Using as much of the slaughtered animal as possible,

@Natalie

Not really, the term 'cows' can be used to refer to male or female cattle.

Re: Using as much of the slaughtered animal as possible,

I thought BSE was not solely due to ingesting prions in marrow \ offal but due to farmers feeding cows on cows (ground up cow bones and everything they couldn't pass off as a burger and also in some cases cow excrement as food). Specifically that it is canabalism element that was generating the problem and that eating normal grass fed cow brains is fine. I could of course be going senile so please do correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: I'l correct myself :-) it was from cow meal contaminated by sheep infected with scrapie. So cow brain can be safe as long as mad sheep are kept away :-)

I don't have a huge issue with eating more of an animal, it doesn't even have to be stuffed in icecream, but I think we do need to ensure it's safe before we start ramming cow tonka down invalids throats. People may flinch at roast cow cock, but do they flinch at kebabs (ok some people may :-)) on a good day a kebab is foreskins, lips and arseholes.

Tea, Earl Grey, hot! NASA blows $125k on Star Trek 3D FOOD PRINTER

Re: Just like inkjet printers...

There are days when that seems both correct and the best course of action :) Got to love TP, so sad he's saddled with his current embuggerance.

'Leccy car biz baron Elon Musk: Thanks for the $500m, taxpayers...

illegal? You mean because he didn't manage to buy his way in with dodgy court decisions and a lower % of the popular vote than his opponent then proceed to destroy the economy ;-) Aye, he is a bit dodgy if you look at it like that! :-) I heard he's also black, first it was the sherrif now potus, whatever next!

If you ever get some time read Barry's unofficial biography. It's absolutely hillarious. It's written by some goon who hates pretty much everyone but it is a great window into a very disturbed individuals mind (the authors that is).

Re: @Rampant Spaniel

I didn't say it fell apart, I said it needed a new expensive battery pack. As for the lithium I said it was damaging to mine, refine AND RECYCLE so what's your point or did you just not read my post.

We need a replacement to petrol powered combustion engines, nimh / liion batteries aren't it right now. Hopefully that will be addressed.

Re: Seems the US is far keener on electric cars than us Brits.

and apparently 'off' spellcheckers lol.

Re: Seems the US is far keener on electric cars than us Brits.

Perhaps memories of Lucas put us of any kind of electrics in a car ;-)

Re: Okay then...

There is far more needs improving than just recharge times. The current battery technologies are simply not up to the job. They are expensive and harmful to the environment which are supposed to be the two areas electric cars win out. That's leaving aside how we currently generate our electricity being harmful as well. If they are going down this route as opposed to a synthetic carbon neutral fuel then they need a battery with significantly higher capacity for its weight, faster recharge times and a longer life.

What good is a battery pack thats expensive, needs replacing every 5-7 years and is damaging to the environment to produce and recycle\dispose of. There isn't even a political win, most of the batteries are sourced abroad. When an electric car has a 300 mile minimum range, can recharge in under 5 minutes and costs no more to buy, run and maintain than a petrol car and doesn't destroy the environment they will have a winner. Assuming we aren't still burning coal in the power stations.

Re: Okay then...

If you cannot afford an electric car now you couldn't have afforded a 'horseless carriage' when they were in their infancy. As much as I detest the current crop of electric cars and the people who think they are actually 'green', this loan was an example of the government making a shrewd investment that put America at the forefront of development. Not only do you have a pretty solid company but you got paid back with interest. Sure it might not have worked out, but that is part of making any investment. Trying to turn this into a bad thing massively damages your credibility. How about you focus on companies buying senators and getting them to grant unconstitutional immunity like the Monsanto rider? Let alone throwing tax breaks to companies off-shoring jobs, thats better than making a loan to a company that creates jobs?

I would hope that massive strides will be made in electric vehicles, we need to look at the whole process and make sure they actually achieve their aims. We need clean power to charge the batteries, we need ecologically safe batteries that don't cause just as much damage (strip mining for ore, processing and disposal) as burning petrol would, they need significantly better capacity and to be able to charge faster not to mention lifespan. Lets hope thats round the corner!

Fedora cooks up new Linux for Raspberry Pi

Re: @Rampant Spaniel

Thanks. So basically it's best feature is that it's pretty much guaranteed to be installed. At least thats a decent reason to learn it.

pico \ nano ftw :-) Had to use vi the other day, it's useful but I find pico quicker and easier. vi is probably a lot easier if you use it all day everyday but I do struggle to find a reason to start using it.

Clearwire to pull Huawei from network

Re: Great news

You forgot black cabs :-) although those are probably made abroad now as well.

Not entirely that simple. It isn't that it has or hasn't got backdoors in it for the Chinese government (it probably does but it doesn't matter much) it's that either it doesn't have US gov't backdoors or the US gov't doesn't want to have to tell a Chinese company what backdoors it wants adding. Either that or it's a policy of making high tech trade with China more difficult whenever possible due to either Chinese companies liking to dump products in the US at insanely low prices or just because senators happen to have shares in Cisco. Take your pick :-) It could be something completely different as well but China is a huge lender and a significant bond owner. There is also reasonable evidence to suggest they do supress their currency value (although the US is doing a good job of diluting it's currencies value) and allow companies to sell goods at below cost due to loans \ grants \ subsidies (not entirely unlike corn in the US, but thats largely for domestic use).

fwiw I'm not looking to be confrontational, I'm just not convinced it's outright xenophobia (although I'm sure that exists in abundance) as the US is normally ok overlooking that if you have something shiny to sell for cheap.

Fibre boosters trip the light fantastic with 800G BPS LINKS

If they want to test it on a transpacific node I know of a little volcano in the middle of nowhere that would gladly host a node :-)

Microsoft caves to Google, pulls YouTube app from WinPhone Store

Re: re: anti-eadon

I'm not sure we could cope with the release of that much delusional negativity!

Re: I reckon

omg we found the anti Eadon! Lets hope they never meet ;-)

Interesting point though. MS spent years denying api access to competitors angnd generally being evil. I don't know to what degree google are trying to hamper ms but theres no doubt its due to the android patent fees ms is collecting. Otherwise g would have released an app and collected the additional ad revenue (albeit small).

Daft tweet by Speaker Bercow's loquacious wife DID libel lord

I know it could seem a little odd but it's actually a rare case of common sense. If she had posted a genuine question i.e. why is lord m trending on twitter? then she probably couldn't have been touched. More significant than the innuendo was the malice, her little innocent face addendum is what did it for her. It moved it from something that could have been a genuine question into a malicious inference which is covered.

Libel law is complicated and very expensive to pursue, it is pretty much the realm of the rich. However there is also a huge amount of common sense involved. Her little comment wasn't in any way innocent, nor was it 'pub gossip', it was malicious and she knew it would be widely viewed. If you happened to pass comment to a friend that her down the street has had a lot of plumbers visit in the past few days, even if her down the street was rich she would be unlikely to win a victory. If you wrote it in the local parish paper that she was going behind her husbands back and getting her pipes checked frequently, then she probably would win. fwiw IANAL but I do drink a lot of wine with several. A lot of in law is daft, this is a rare example of common sense. As was noted above, Lord M settled in a very different manner with someone else who behaved in a more sensible manner. SB has shown herself to be a shallow, childish, little meaningless winnet on the arse of society and has been treated as such. Today seems to be one of the good days.

AT&T adds 61¢ 'Mobility Administrative Fee' for users

A deliming fee for cleaning bird crap off towers?

I understand seperating out govt imposed charges but otherwise it should be a simple charge otherwise we end up with the airline situation where a 99p flight costs 200 quid.

Re: Short Memories

Given the state of at&t's customer service I think you owe flying monkeys an apology!

You are however entirely correct, this is just a back door price rise to keep headline pricing static but still make more money. Scumbags. Yes it's only 61c but it's still as dishonest.

Happy 23rd birthday, Windows 3.0

Re: Short Memories

oh god don't go there. Dos was 3 disks, windows maybe 7 or 8? Smartsuite was something like 40, corel draw was nearly as bad. Photoshop wasn't terrible iirc. Then you'd hear the drive chunter 75% of the way through and you knew the disk was screwed. Life is so much easier these days!

AMD's three new low-power chips pose potent challenge to Intel

Re: AMD already has its groove, though more will be nice too

Interesting, it's funny how things changed. My experience was always that intel had the edge in mobile but AMD had some interesting high end desktop parts that on a bang per buck basis matched or beat intel BUT also added more features. AMD mobile chips were relatively powerful but basically nut roasters in laptops. I hadn't actually used any of the modern lower end mobile amd's so it's great to hear they are doing well. The atom always did seem like a half hearted effort from intel. I did have an earlier acer aspire netbook and it was woeful at anything beyond email and basic word processing. I think they missed the importance of youtube etc and the earlier atoms just couldn't do h264, hell even flash adverts on webpages could slow it down.

If it isn't marketing hype then this is great news for everyone. AMD really shook things up when it caught intel napping many years ago. I was starting to give up hope for AMD ever recovering as things went from bad to worse, not because I love AMD but because I recognise the value of competition. A healthy AMD means a vaguely competitive market. Intel has massive resources both financial and intellectual and they most definately brought them to bear. From the early P4's to the start of the core i3/4/7 range we saw a surge in performance. As AMD's fortunes declined in recent years and they fell behind in the 'arms race' it seems like Intel slowed down as well. Yearly updates seemed to result in a modest 10% bump in speeds which isn't a great motivator to upgrade. It will be interesting to see what the next generation of fx chips can do, hopefully the 14nm Broadwell's will maybe go to 6 cores and a faster clock. I know power is important in mobile but it is less so in a workstation so a sanely priced powerhouse would be welcome!

I guess I can dream :-)

BT Tower is just a relic? Wrong: It relays 18,000hrs of telly daily

Does it use bistromath?

Given it's mobility constraints, I would say a space ship designed by a government committee :-)

O2 brushed off outsourcing 'rumour' - but it's happening ... to THOUSANDS

Outsourcing, the last resort of the completely useless manager. If it makes sense to outsource 10 quid an hour jobs, lets outsource all the C level jobs and the BOD, they're on a fortune so you should save a fortune.

Seriously, I am the only one who can't see the sense in offshoring (which is what will happen here eventually, sadly). If everyone jumps on the offshoring bandwagon there will be sod all people left employed here to buy anyones products. Some costs shouldn't be saved. It's like they're all playing some giant game of jenga with the economy, at some point it will collapse entirely. The states is even worse, tax breaks for sending jobs overseas??