Posts by Volker Hett

Apple crushes rivals under its heel in Euro fondleslab sales

Sony seems to be on the right track now, they don't advertise the tablet, they advertise Sony Entertainment WITH the tablet, at least in german TV now.

Asus UX21E Zenbook 11.6in Ultrabook

and buy two licenses for one computer, good idea.

Memo to self, buy MSFT

And your Dell is how big and the battery lasts how long and it weighs how much?

Transformer doesn't run Adobe Lightroom, so not for me :)

IT guy answers daughter's Facebook rant by shooting her laptop

It's tough being the BOFHs daughter :)

She was lucky, it could have been a bus or a stuck elevator :)

Spacemen urge NASA to build nuke ship for Mars trip

There is gigantic nuclear power in the center of earths orbit :)

Mac OS X ARM port by Apple work experience kid revealed

I don't want iOS Apps on my Laptop! I want the full grown Adobe Lightroom and Libre Office and Pixelmator and Postgresql and VMware Fusion ....

Exactly what I thought, Apples X86 business is large enough to keep Intel listening.

40,000 Apple fanbois demand ethical iPhone 5

Ok, let's allow another 10 GBP for transport and the guy in the shop.

Millions face Megaupload data deletion by Thursday

Some people have to buy new, or there wouldn't be much used stuff to buy.

Use iBooks Author, only Apple can ever publish the result

Actualy, where is the problem?

If you don't own a Mac and don't intend to sell to iPad users, why are you complaining?

And how do you do interactive eBooks in Libre Office? With videos, interactive pictures and more?

Nothing new. Where do you expect punters with devices running iBook reader? Yes, in the iTunes store.

Up to now there is just one iBook 2 reader and that one runs on iPads and nowhere else.

It's only the iBook file.

The tool has just one purpose, making iBook files.

iBook Author is for iPads only

So I don't see big problems as long as I can repackage my works with another tool for another platform.

On the other hand, iBook Author and iBook 2 on iPad can do things ePub can't, it is tempting.

HP pitches 10in netbook at business

That'd be the DM1 from HP for me.

Iomega TV with Boxee

In case they use WD 2TB Harddisks, better add another one from somebody else as a backup. I had far to many WD20EARS with capital failures recently.

Sikorsky plays killer copter sim on SGI Altix UV 1000

And which OS is it?

Windows 2008R2 or Linux?

Samsung joins Ultrabook race

1996?

For Notebooks, yes, but on my desk I had 1024x768 in 1991.

With 0ffice 2010 with Ribbons anything less than 900px height is to small. Even with typical websites, Sitting in front of a 1400x1050 display almost 1/3 of this website are black.

Acer unveils 'world's thinnest' Ultrabook

Probably with a 768 pixel high display :(

Hard to install Gnome and Evolution with displays lower than 800 pixels.

Kodak heading to Chapter 11

Don't bother with the DCS 14n, it's quite good in the studio with controlled lighting, but don't compare it to any DSLR after 2002. A friend of mine got one to replace his F90x and F100 film bodies because then the D100 wasn't good enough for a studio photographer working for glossy magazines. The D200 was, and the D300 even more, now he's shooting D700 and D3. He still has a F90x and the DCS 14 in a cabinet, just for memories :)

Besides the JPEGs

there is a market for good printing materials and Kodak has a name there. 10 years ago I could have never imagined buying photographic materials at Epson or HP. With my first capable digital Cameras, a Canon Powershot G1 and an EOS D30, I had most of my pictures printed on Kodak paper and I looked for labs using Kodak paper, I didn't want anything less.

And then came the Fuji Minilabs operated by real photo lab technicians and even if they used Fuji paper, the results where what I wanted.

The lab I ended up at could print from digital and film up to 6x9, all on Fuji paper.

Kodak was nearly out. Nearly because I was tempted by the Kodak digital Back for my Contax 645 and/or a Canon EOS mount version of the DCS14. When they came up with the Sigma made DCS pro SLR c I was seriously underwhelmed and when Canon came with the 5D Kodak was history for me.

A Minilab like the Fuji ones and a capable 135 digital SLR could have saved them. Add paper and ink in Kodak quality for other printers, the big Epsons and Canons used by many photographers as well as the smaller ones for the hobbyists, could have saved them.

Scaling back film production to satisfy a smaller but dedicated enthusiast market would have been the icing on the cake.

Apple land-grabs fuel cells for mobiles

I don't think it's restricted to Apple, as long as it is for the good of the US Economy, i.E. wellbeing of US lawyers.

Haven't others already patented this? Oh, sorry, I forgot, it's about patents not about technology. You need patents to trade against other patents so you can do what's obvious.

I wander which patents Microsoft has there, and several firms we never heard about.

Iran spy drone GPS hijack boasts: Rubbish, say experts

Back in the days

when I was in the german navy, we weren't allowed to track Tornados with our WM25 Fire Control System. (Mk. 92 in the US on the Perry Class frigates) because one was lost due to electronics malfunction when hit by the pulse.

I do think that there are ways to down a drone short of GPS jamming, just use some very high powered land based STIR like Radar and burn out it's brains.

US spy drone hijacked with GPS spoof hack, report says

IMUs are good enough to make a rendezvous in space, no GPS at the ISS!

Hacking into a command and control channel looks easier to me than feeding handmade GPS signals which are good enough so the drone can land on an airfield thousands of miles from it's intended place of landing, most probably with a landing strip in slightly different direction and different length and so on.

Forged position with forged direction but correct speed over ground, most probably with a forged time as well.

And all this while the flight controller is looking!

Jamming works on both signals, you can't know which frequency is in use by the receiver so you jam all.

Even more so with GPS, back in the days of the cold war GPS used to be MADE inaccurate for everybody and the US forces used the undoctored but encrypted signals. Since the birds in orbit are still the same and they still can make the signals inaccurate, there must still be a way to use an encrypted signal.

What's next? A Tomahawk turning around and attacking it's mothership?

Windows 8 fondleslabs: Microsoft tip-toes through PC-makers' disaster

I'm a unix/linux junie, too. And I see a shift away from PCs as you do. Not in Offices and not with us geeks, but the average guy or girl who just want to check mail, skype, IM and update Twitter or Facebook and watch movies or play a casual game. Probably 2/3rd of the consumer market is interested in tablets.

Soon a PC will be "work" to a lot of people and they'll want something else for the rest of the day.

this is 2011, isn't it?

Balmer talked about tablets on the CES 2010 and introduced the HP Slate, didn't he?

Don't remind me

I'd trade my soul for a courier, love it!

Those SMEs which jumped on Vista and Windows 7?

Those who switched to IE7 as soon as possible and can't await IE10 so they can get rid of all those Silverlight Apps which replaced VB and ActiveX?

Hey, they bought enormous amounts of Acer Iconia W500 to replace the Asus T101 they had before.

Infographic: The road to desktop virtualisation

I like abstract paintings

but Kandinsky was better

Hasselblad H4D-200MS medium format multishot camera

A lot of advertising is shot indoors. In last decades the cameras and the medium changed, but that's it. I remember my father blocking clockworks in watches he photographed for ads. A ISO 50 film at f32 needs several seconds exposure, even with studio lighting.

not anywhere near film resolution? Ok, when you use something like gigabit film, i.e. tech pan with a magic developer, and scan that wet mounted on a very expensive drum scanner. Back in the days I had some 700 MB files from 6x9 slides scanned on a Linotype-Hell Chromagraph.

Today I wouldn't know where to go for the scans.

BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

This is a problem!

With Oxygen V2 I trust peer review and AdamG himself, but with apps and third party markets I'm paranoid.

This is pretty normal for malware checking firewalls. If you have to check your banking account during working hours, why not use your smartphone?

Sorry to rain in your parade

but he is right. Best thing what happened to my HTC Desire was the Oxygen V2 Custom ROM and it's pretty easy to install. Ok, I've got some 20 years experience in Unix and some 30 with computers, but I used a prepackaged kit on Windows to install it with a few mouse clicks. I use computers because I'm lazy :)

Mines the one with the key to the room with the big shelf with system 7 manuals.

Consumer interest in Windows 8 tablets slumps

Office without a keyboard? No way!

Several 100 million corporate users will just have moved to Windows 7 Desktops and Notebooks, They won't move to tablets any time soon ...

Rumoured iPhone 5 'will have 4in screen' against Jobs' wish

Haven't you played Leisure Suit Larry?

Mines the one with the inflatable doll

Mysterious sat-pic China desert markings - EXPLAINED

One looks like a 1:1 representation of a taiwanese air field

chinese painting http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-75251.html

real air field http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-75251-3.html

Colossal dead black neo-sphere approaching Earth

since my garden pond is too small for a nuclear aircraft carrier, I wonder what that is in bulgarian airbags.

Apple requires Mac App Store candidates to be sandboxed

Adobe won't like that!

Imagine a flash player or PDF reader without all the possibilities to highjack the system with actionscript.

Beer, this will be a funny friday afternoon :)

Hands on with Canon's EOS-1D X full-frame DSLR

No, a touch screen wouldn't make sense. You keep those cameras to your eye while shooting.

For me it was the 5D where digital broke even with film. Still have my first one and don't feel a need for the new model. Two of my friends are photojournalists, one paparazzo and one motorsports, and I can borrow all sorts of lenses, flashes and 1d bodies, but for me the old 5d with a f2 35mm is all I want :)

Add a battered old f3.5-4.5 24-85 in silver (!) which I bought used for the beach some 10 years ago when I had the D60.

But for my professional friends, the 1D-X will be something they long for, 24x36 sensor with APX speed in one body. Less to pack and faster to change from quality to speed.

Vlingo

I just installed the Android version and am less impressed.

Is this the intended workflow:

Start Vlingo

select mode - start application

press button

say whatsup

press button

VLingo understood words app

press back

repeat

...

Gartner predicts global double-dip recession

As globals as the World Series?

Or does it include the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and other insignificant regions like Europe?