Posts by David Haworth

DARPA seeks spraycan wound-polyfilla* for injured troops

@You mean 2-octyl-cyanoacrylate...

I take it that cyanide isn't a problem then?

Mac mini said to get Ion innards

Mini - no, appletv - perhaps

This would seem a foolish move. The mac mini has traditionally been built on ibook/macbook innards and it seems a sensible way of doing it.

the atom just doesn't have the guts., and would be significantly slower than the current mini.

now I could believe them using an atom to power a new appletv perhaps? but no t the mini (I hope)

dave

Microsoft and Apple: 25 years of couples therapy

@What's a PC

while you're correct, it's become a fairly well understood phrase to describe generic x86 based computers capable of running windows (and not made by apple :) ). Calling them IBM compatible PC's doesn't seem proper anymore, as IBM aren't even in the game anymore (and the term might now be more likely to mean compatible with the POWER architecture).

so yes, you're right, but I don't think it matters much anymore.

dave

UK sportscar makers announce electric models

@AC

Firstly, I'm glad we're keeping this civil, good to have a proper discussion on the net!

secondly, yes I am aware of transmission losses, btu I'd hope that the efficiencies gained from bulk creation of electricity should overcome that. You also get the advantage that most of the environment that we humans spend a lot of time in, suffers less pollution. Central creation also deals with (as far as the consumer is concerned) your surges issue. not everyone boils the kettle at the same time, so it balances out (okay, sometimes they do, but the power companies plan for this).

Another big issue with hydrogen is that of energy density. even liquid hydrogen has a lot less hydrogen in it than petrol, which means that you'll need to burn through it faster to maintain the same power levels.

I do like the idea of local micro-generation and CHP where you've got the appropriate resources and where it makes sense, but I think for a lot of people it's not going to be that easy. Unless someone comes up with a simple one box solution which can be easily installed and make an appreciable difference.

but then, I'm no expert as to what can be done...

dave

@And

Well, it does count, because:

a) while the pollution now happens at he power station, it can be done in more efficient and less polluting ways, with possible transition to more green methods. you're bulk producing energy with the gains that can be made by doing so,

b) big power stations can have various forms of pollution controls applied to them that might not be practical on cars

c) the pollution is restricted to certain small areas and can eb dealt with mroe easily, rather than being produced everywhere.

On the hydrogen comment (made by an AC). While I see that hydrogen could be useful, I still see it as somewhat of a stopgap. it replaces one IC fuel with another. instead of burning petrol, we now burn hydrogen instead. yes it's much greener, but it fixes us to a different fuel, as we are fixed to petrol now. if we make a move to electric sooner rather than later, then it gives us the flexibility to change how we generate the electricity. we could make it from coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, hell, some big solar plant or geothermal energy. whatever.

There are issues with distributing and storing electricity, but we have similar issues with distributing and storing hydrogen (doesn't it leak through steel?).

still, it'll be interesting to see what comes out of all this.

dave

In the ditch with DAB radio

part of the problem

is that by and large, the quality of the DAB radio stations is actually worse than the analogue ones. they don't have to be, but all the broadcasters are going for a quantity over quality approach and stuffing more stations in, htus bringing down the bandwidth for the remaining stations. generally, if you get a half decent analogue signal, it'll be better than the DAB one.

I had a very posh DAB radio (sony 777es) and kept it for years, but normally listened to stations also available on analogue, and earlier in the year, I sold it for more than I bought it for.

dave

Apple dealer buys its way into the Midlands

WOW

I hadn't realised that GHC still existed. I'm sure I once bought a GVP 500 external 52MB SCSI HD and memory bank for my Amiga 500 from them, way back when.

Dave

Sony to bring E Ink eBook reader to UK in September

I like the idea

I have a load of books floating around the flat but I do like the idea of one of these. I like the idea of having a bunch of books all stored within the size of one novel. If I took public transport more (and thus had a lot of reading time avail) then I would look very seriously at such a thing. as it is, I might look anyway, though I also own a mac, don't know what the compatibility issues might be like...

dave

EU sets ambitious IPv6 target

apple airport

I might add that I use an apple airport extreme do do my natting, and it auto-configures ipv6 tunnels for me. This means that any machine on my network that wants to configure ipv6 can do so, and use it and my ISP knows no different.

I know it's not an ideal solution, but as an easy work around, it solves the immediate problem until my ISP catches up.

dave

World economy group gives IPv6 big push

@herbie

some home routers do. My apple airport extreme for example supports ipv6 and does auto-tunnelling to give me an ipv6 address at home.

Government orders data retention by ISPs

Who is an ISP?

Do they define what an ISP is? I run a mail and webserver which I and several friends and family have accounts on. This is "Internet Service" which I provide. does this law apply to me? do I need to start keeping a lot more mail logs or what?

Sony details PS3 DVR pricing, launch date

@mark

"Already confirmed, if you could be bothered to read up on it.." re HD tuners.

my understanding is that while it has 2 HD tuners, it's still a DVB-T device. IE it can show SD freeview as broadcast now, and if someone is broadcasting HD over DVB-T )as I believe happens in a few places in europe) then it can record that.

however the forthcoming HD freeview is due to use the as yet not standardised DVB-T2 isn't it? I'm not aware that sony has confirmed any compatibility with DVB-T2 and if it doesn't work, then it won't be able to pick up those 4 HD channels.

dave

@Johnny English

I have an LCD but for reasons I won't go into now, I'd rather use an external freeview decoder. I didn't buy a PS3 as a DVR, I bought it as a games console, bluray player and network media player. however the ability to add PVR functionality is very interesting to me.

@hugh.

yes, the standard UK ps3 has a 40G hd, the original ones like mine have a 60G hd and yes, it will fill up, but then PS3's hard disk can easily be replaced by the user with a bigger one. the instructions to do so come in the manual. hence it's not quite as limiting as a tivo, sky+ or other PVR.

dave

what about HD?

I've been interested in this product for some time as a hopeful replacement for my trusty tivo. I thought this had the capacity to be a really good pvr as it has the processing power to be nice and quick, attractive EPG, the ability to export shows as raw mpeg files etcetc.

the problem is that in the UK, freesat was "launched" yesterday (as in the service was launched, not the satellite). this is a similar service to freeview but over a satellite and hence with much wider availability across the UK and more bandwidth. It will host broadly the same channels (with some differences), but the big news is that freesat will be able to host HD channels which is really useful for all of us with HD ready tv's but no sky (and there are quite a few of us who don't want to pay sky a monthly tithe).

so just as playtv comes out, a whole bunch of people will suddenly be looking at satellite tv instead, which this doesn't support.

The other thing is that while HD over freeview is still looking to happen (apparently in the northwest first, yay for me) it's likely to be using the proto-standard DVB-T2. current freeview is DVB-T. I'm not aware that sony have stated compatibility with DVB-T2 yet (not surprising, I don't think it's been agreed yet). will the playtv be software upgradeable to the new standard? if not then we won't be able to take advantage of that touted HD compatibility they talk about. the thing is, while technically they are right, it does support HD, people won't understand why it won't support HD for them and will then blame sony.

This means that for me, the most interesting freeview PVR suddenly has two main obstacles to success. lack of (stated) compatibility with DVB-T2, and thus with UK HD freeview, and lack of compatibility with freesat.

so both UK routes for free broadcast HD are closed to this device. I'd love to know if Sony have a response to these concerns...

dave

Apple MacBook Air Early 2008

If there's one thing I'd change...

For me, the MBA really only needs one thing extra to make it substantially more useful for a number of people, and that is an expresscard 3/4 slot. If they could find some room to add that, then the power user could add their own expresscard slots that adds whatever is missing for them, perhaps a 3g card, a couple more usb ports, firewire ports, tv tuner, a flash drive etcetc.

I think that the form-factor would allow for such a slot to be added and would hlp flesh out the laptop for a number of users, and give it at least some of an upgrade path.

dave

I'd like an air

I currently use a 1st gen MBP and there's nothing wrong with it. it's a perfectly good machine, btu I love the idea of the air. I agree it is a bit shrot on ports, but I can't remember the last time I used most of the ports on my MBP, and I rarely (if ever) use more than one USB port at once.

From a purity PoV I think firewire is better than USB for mass storage, but the truth is, I habven't owned a firewire drive in some time. my laptop is virtually never plugged into ethernet, it's all on wireless. my dvd drive is rarely in use (the occasional dvd rip or cd rip, I would be happy to use an externa ldrive for it). and I have never replaced the battery in any laptop I have ever used (either work or personal).

I love the backlit keyboard as I do use the laptop in low light from time to time, I like laptops to be slim, light and good looking. the screen is big enough.

basically I can't justify changing my current laptop, but if it mysteriously got hit by an asteroid, or fell under the wheels of a lorry, I'd give the air serious consideration. would the macbook do everything that air does and more? yes, but I'd want to air (and I just know I'd want the SSD version too!).

dave

Apprentice contestant to offer Zeppelin trips above London

@Weather

> I guess that the zepplin will not fly during wet and windy days.

I don't see why not? zeppelins can fly a lot faster than most people give them credit for and the zeppelin NT tops out at about 80mph, preferring to cuise at about 45-50 I would think. It would have to be fairly windy in london to make the airship completely unsafe, though they'll have a fair margin of error there. still, in winds up to 20-30mph they'd probably be okay. and 30mph winds are fairly strong...

dave

Beeb iPlayer gets Firefox-friendly

@Tim J

The BBC have stated that iplayer does not yet require the ownership of a TV licence.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/01/iplayer_does_not_require_a_tv_1.html

Jobs: Blu-ray wins HD format war then loses to downloads

appletv and downloadable movies

I watched they keynote and steves talk about the future of the appletv and I have to say, it looks great. I currently rent dvd's by post, but the ability to rent them online looks like a feature I could easily use (esp if the new look appletv can be hacked to accept other codecs, as the last one I beleive could.

I could certainly see someone like my dad using this to rent movies (if I could convince him to up his internet connection), esp if the BBC go ahead with their plans to put iplayer on the appletv.

Appletv could easily become a major source of HD material for all those HD ready tv's that people have bought but I have a concern about the quality of material. The nice thing about Bluray and HDdvd is that they can put extremely high bitrate movies on the discs easily and we benefit from the increase in quality if our tv's are sufficiently good. also we get uncompressed 5.1 audio, or lossless with the new codecs from dolby and dts.

what will appletv give us in this regard? it's likely that the bitrate will be scaled back quite a way to make downloads faster and to use less bandwidth, which means thyat the quality will suffer. a movie on bluray can easily be 20G+, I'd be surprised if even a high def film coming into an appletv was over 2G which would be less than 10% of the filesize.

Also, steve-o was advertising 5.1 dolby digital I think, so no lossless audio either.

lets not forget that blurays and hddvd offer up to 1080p resolution, whereas the appletv is a 720p only device.

appletv is undoubtedly a good idea, but it feels like we're heading into the mp3 of audio. it's more convenient, but worse in quality. probably not sifficiently worse that more people will care, but worse nevertheless.

I worry that perhaps bluray will end up being a niche for AV nuts only and low bitrate downloads will rule the day.

thoughts on a postcard?

dave

Apple NAS box ties in to Leopard's Time Machine

@Ian

just to correct you, whilst the AE does support SMB (using samba I beleive as you predicted) it also supports AFP, and apples own AFP at that so the backup would be from an apple supported filing system on an apple machine, over a supported apple network protocol to a supported apple NAS via a supported apple network protocol onto a supported apple filing system. all from the same vendor, nothing reverse engineered.

so really, it ought to work, now we just need apple to make it work and lets hope that the release of time capsule doesn't make them feel like they've solved the problem...

dave

Cash-strapped NHS seeks Project Manager

parity?

it's been posted by "Parity Resources2 which implies that's what they pay everyone now...

Pioneer Project Kuro 'Extreme Contrast' first look

@john

LCD's are brighter than plasma's, and cheaper to make in higher resolutions, but LCD's have always struggled with black (which plasmas have always been good at). many people would say that a plasma at 1024x768 looks better than an LCD at 1920x1080.

I have an LCD now, btu if I were buying again I'd probably go for a plasma.. indeed a pioneer kuro plasma at that. not sure if I could justify the spend on a 1080p one mind...

Online sellers warned on UK cheque clearance changes

cleared

I've always thought banks have done this incorrectly. in a sense, I don't mind too much how long it takes to clear, as long as it is made abundantly clear to me that it has cleared, and once cleared, that's the end of it.

if a cheque takes 7 working days to clear then I think that either:

a) it should nto appear on my statement until it is cleared or

b) it should appear labelled as not cleared, and ocne it has cleared, the statement should say so clearly.

is there any major problem with either of the two ideas? it makes no sense to me that your bank account should be updated to reflect a payment that has not yet been approved. if the money is not mine to spend, why is it in my account? I don't want to see it there, and then have to count the days trying to work out if it's safe to post an item or not yet, I want it to be clearly marked as safe so that I can be sure that everything is okay.

dave

GMail shakes IMAP out of coma

@robert long

Care to give us your reasoning on why imap sucks? not that I don't want to take your word for it, but I've been using imap successfully for years and afaik, it is a superset of pop3 anyways, ie anything you can do with pop3, you can do with imap anyways.

LG launches 'world's smallest' plasma TV

the worlds smallest plasma?

it's hardly the words smallest. I remember seeing a Hitachi 32PD5200 in curries years ago (2004ish I think) which was a 32" HD ready plasma TV. 1024x1024 res, DVI (with HDCP) and component connectivity.

not the greatest specs in the world I grant you, but it's the same screen size, it's a plasma and it's 3 years older. I'm not saying that the LG screen isn't alright, but it's hardly the worlds smallest.

dave

L1NUX number plate roars onto eBay

@to be expected

I don't mind people having private plates. I think it can look quite nice, depending on the plate. and it de-ages the car which is nice. would I have one? possibly, except I can't work out what I'd buy. any ones I might conceivably want are waaay too expensive I think. also the paperwork whenever one buys and sells a car seems like a lot of hassle...

dave

A little more Conversation, to get in on the action

@Steve Ousley

I'm not sure from reading your comment, does the N95 have a lot of memory, or not much? :)

The iPhone arrives, but is O2 being taken for a ride?

ipod touch vs iphone

in response to the person who says that apple don't want to sell iphones, they want to sell ipods. I don't think this is the case. if the ipod touch had all the functionality of the iphone but without the phone then I would be highly tempted to buy one. but it doesn't. it's missing mail, some of the widgets and generally, the browser almost looks like it's only there to let you log into hotspots to use the wifi itunes store (it probably is). I know I can check my mail via webmail but I prefer not to. I prefer to have a real mail client where I can compose and read mail offline, and I'm in an itnerface designed to be on a small screen with touch input.

that's my problem. I want all the non-phone functionality of the iphone, I may want it as a phone as well, depending on what it costs me. I like the idea of visual voicemail (I've always resisted voicemail partly due to the antiquated interface)

I currently pay £25pm on o2 for 100mins/texts and a shiny new phone each year (se k810i atm). probably not the best tariff I admit but there you go. I don't really want to pay £35pm, especially over 18months. I've always kept to 12 months for flexibility.Even though this includes wifi access (which is a bit tempting), I bet you can't use that wifi account on a laptop too.

I wonder if you can buy an iphone, put an o2 sim inside it that has all internet access explicitly turned off so that you can use a tariff of your choice but not rack up massive data charges. or can you have an internet enabled sim but turn on and off data access over the mobile networkas you need it but allow it free access over the wifi network. I'm not bothered if it only picks up my mail when in a wifi hotspot.

I don't mind paying for the device itself, it's the monthly charges that I find very offputting. O2 aren't subsidising the handset at all, so why force an 18month contract?

AT&T turns screws on iPhone unlocker

Voice Dialling?

@Morely Dotes

>What moron would buy an iPhone? It can't do voice dialing

I have to say that I've owned several phones with voice dialling and I've never used it once, never particularly wanted to. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone use voice dialling now I come to think about it. how many people use that feature?

would I like an iphone... perhaps. I'll probably look more favourably on it when they come out with a second gen version with 3g and fixes for all the first gen issues that have and will come up.

Broadbandit nabbed in Wi-Fi bust

asking permission

I wonder if a case could be made when using open networks that you've asked and received permission to use them.

surely the act of your computer sending out a DHCP request can be considered as a request to make use of the service, and the router's DHCP reply could be considered as approval, along with the details you need to gain access?

for people trying to crack WEP/WPA passwords, then I agree, that's going to far, but I would imagine an enterprising lawyer could make a case for using an open network with the above... am I wrong?

The owner of the router may not have approved you explicitly, but his equipment has done so on his behalf.