* Posts by BigTim

33 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Aug 2007

Apple dangles Spangles while Dabbsy's cables rankle

BigTim
Thumb Up

Finally

A picture worthy of replacing "girl on a beach with the ee PC"

Please Reg can we think of some suprious reasons to keep reposting it?

Ten ancestors of the netbook

BigTim

LG Phenom

Missed out the LG phenom and the cadre of Windows CE machines!

I had a phenom in 1998/99 and amazed colleagues that I could connect to the net over IrDA to my nokia 6510 and download content at a blistering 14,400 baud (I think data was a flat £5/month unlimited at the time).

The touchscreen and built in word, excel etc were actaully pretty useful for working on short docs on the train and the outlook client was.. OK. IE was fine for basic sites.

It now lives in my son's toy box and though it doesn't switch on anymore the casing has survided many a fall down the stairs.

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

BigTim
FAIL

Mobile phones? That's nothing!

In 1979 you couldn't even buy a zx80, now we have ipads up the wazoo.

All praise maggie.

FFS.

The Oric-1 is 30

BigTim
Paris Hilton

You never forget your first. I think my Oric atmos (which was "upgraded" from an Oric 1 through an offer at Oric where they took you old machine and gave you a new one) is still in my parents' attic.

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

BigTim
FAIL

"apple symbol was not chosen by chance"

No, it's a tribute to Alan Turing you French f***wit!

Freeview HD - your questions answered

BigTim

@ Rotacyclic RE: Freeview HD test transmissions

Sorry Rota, it's you that is wrong.

Yes, your friend recorded the Freeview HD transmissions a year or 2 ago but these were done on DVB-T. That solution was discarded and they went (with Ofcom's heavy hand) to DVB-T2 instead. As has been accurately reported, you cannot buy any DVB-T2 equipment at the moment, not even a usb tuner.

Also the EBU description in the article is incorrect. The EBU uses a / in the notion so "1080i/25" Still a misleading notation, of course as this can refer to a transmission standard of 50 fields not 25 interlaced frames (yes, there is a n important difference).

Unions demands better conditions for temps

BigTim
Grenade

eople who earn >£250 a day and pay the same amount of tax as someone earning minimum wage

Sorry that's just total BS unless said contractor is using some kind of phoney company on the isle of Man or somesuch (these schemes are being shut down now and quite right too).

Contractors' companies pay corp tax on their income and then they pay income tax on the dividend (0% for basic rate and 22.5% on higher rate) meaning the marginal rate is higher than income tax (because corp tax rate is now higher than basic rate income tax) They also pay NI on any salary or benefits in kind they get from their co.

They are not tax dodgers, they typically pay more in tax than someone on permanent salary. Yes this is to compensate for the inherent risk of their position, the travelling to jobs away from home, sick time, long periods between contracts. This is what they accept when they decide to go contract.

If they winge about it, then, just like a permie who's complaining that the other side of the fence has the greener grass then they should simply jump and shut up. Can't have it both ways.

Boffins: Send robot lawn tractors to the Moon

BigTim
Stop

"Almost inifinite"

What's that number that's the difference between "almost" and "infinity" again?

Pentax K-m entry-level digital SLR

BigTim
Happy

@martin - what you get in a DSLR

You get a much, much, bigger image sensor and this has 2 effects:

1. Much, much less noise in pictures, especially low light ones as the pixel density on the sensor is much lower (each gets moire light)

2. Control over depth of field. high quality pics often have focus on a subject within the frame, portraits are a good example, with the rest of the iamge being a nice smooth blur of soft focus. This is easy to achieve on a DSLR by just opening up the aperture, compacts and bridge cameras weith compact sensors struggle to achieve any meaningful DOF effects. So, for e.g. if you take picture of someone in the crown, the entire crowd is in sharp focus not jsut your subject, the image is flat and boring.

3. Ability to use different lenses for different effects, filters, high quality raw images.

The list goes on but 1 and 2 alone will mean that pics on a base model DSLR with kit lens (like a D40) will easily best those on a high end bridge cam.

Google to jettison 'second class citizens'

BigTim
Pirate

Just waiting for the regualr Permie backlash comments

Good enough for them, fat cat contractors etc. etc.

Yes! It's the Darth Vader breakfast toaster

BigTim
Coat

Impressive

Most impressive

Ofcom confirms three Freeview HD channels 'by end of next year'

BigTim
Thumb Up

@Bassey no need to pay sky

You can get freesat instead, that's already got HD and n'ery a penny goes to Mr Murdoch.

Hubble transmissions cease as computer fails

BigTim
Coat

Failsafe

A failsafe system fails when it fails to failsafe.

Acorn alumni to toast tech pioneer's 30th anniversary

BigTim
Black Helicopters

Acorn electrons for Christmas 2003?

Have I stepped into one of those parallel worlds where the West lost the cold war?

Barclays and HBOS slash contractor rates

BigTim

@Andy Bottomley

Why did you resist the urge? Was it becuase of a sense of duty to your employer or because it isn't the bed of roses you paint it as (and as this story puts into clear reflief)?

Orangutans concoct plant-based soothing balm

BigTim
Coat

Right turn Clyde

and stop outside Boots, I need some hydrocortisone cream.

Apple iPhone 3G

BigTim
Jobs Horns

Who uses MMS?

Anyone who has kids.

Gutted if I couldn't send/receive pics of the little ones when me or she is in work.

Europe loves HD TVs - but not HD broadcasts

BigTim
Stop

@ Mage RE: HD marginally better than upscaled SD

I think you di it a deservice especially as you focus on the vertical resolution.

SD is 720*576i at best. A good few freeview or SKY channels are transmitted as 544*576i.

Compare that to HD which is 1280*720p at worst. That's a near or better than doubling of horizontal resolution, and a near tripling of vertical resolution for movement (because 576i it 288 ilnes every second whilst 720p is 720 lines every second).

It looks dramatically different and is much better when scaled up to 1366*768 than SD is, if only for the fact no deinterlacing has to take place with the compromises that can entail (especially with anything other than film sourced content).

Sure, if you have a 26inch set and sit 10 feet away you may not see the benefit. But, as people buy into HD, they almost always go up a screen size or 2 (I went from 28inch to 40inch and that's common with others I've spoken to). Bigger the screen, the more apparent the benefit of HD whether it be 1080i or 720p

'course the boradacasters are doiong their best to ruin it with crappy bit rates) those planned for freeview are super crap). But there you go.

Nikon D40 entry-level digital SLR

BigTim

seriously considered one of these

After reading Ken Rockwell, but the guy's shill at best and an opinionated egomaniac at worst.

Still a good cam but I'm happy after deciding to shell out more ££ and get a 450D.

Acer punts £199 Linux laptop

BigTim

Nice, a linux one for me with a XP install

Pull the SSD drive and either flog on ebay or use for something else, replace with an 80gb HDD, do my own XP install from one of my spare licenses.

No bloatware and at least £50 saved. Nice.

Temp workers to get equal rights after 12 weeks

BigTim
Stop

Won't apply to typical IT contractors

As they (we) operate through limited companies as directors not employees.

This only hits temps, which of course, the agencies would prefer us to be.

Medion takes aim at Asus' Eee

BigTim

re: only 802.11N

N is backwards comaptible with B and G.

Ofcom confirms Freeview will get HD next year

BigTim
Unhappy

@ Michael Saunders

Sorry Mike, you will need a new box,

There are _no_ TVs on the market that wil be able to receive this new HD service.

As someone has already posted, it's slated to use the DVB-T2 standard. This is not ratified yet and there are no commericially available DVB-T2 tuners.

So, a new box for you and, perhaps, some tellies with this built in out in a year's time.

Texas man tries to cash $360bn cheque

BigTim
Joke

Wrong Currency

It was obviously Zimbabwean dollars and he wanted to buy a stapler.

Discoverer of LSD dead at 102

BigTim
Alert

Thanks for

"Super mario"

Says it all?

NASA gets intimate with Phobos

BigTim

@ Chris

Don't remind me! I never did get out of Cleveland.

Jules Verne creeps up on ISS

BigTim
Paris Hilton

GPS in space Uh?

How does that work then? Surely the ISS isn't at a lower orbit than the GPS satellites?

Paris is as clueless as me.

Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD player

BigTim
Alert

Had me one of these for Christmas

not bad, greast pic though load times were slow and had some freezing probs even after firmware update.

Sent it back for a full refund as soon as the Warner news broke.

Now in the market for a Ps3. Hey ho,

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

BigTim
Jobs Horns

M$'s own HD-DVD add on works on Mac

Doesn't it? Sure I've heard of people plugging them in to find them recognised (as data drives but no installed software to play the movie).

Frankly though the 5Mbs 720p video with 5.1 of the Apple TV downloads doesn't compare to the 20Mbs (or higher) 1080p with HD sound encoding on the discs you can rent for a similar amount or buy for a few quid more.

Toshiba DVR dumps HD to HD DVD

BigTim

No, it's not HD freeview

It picks up the completely different Japanese terrestrial mpeg2 HD broadcasts.

The London trial was h264 and ended months ago in any case.

This thing must be heavily compressing the HD to get 2 hours on a DVD the max bitrate on a DVD is something like 10Mbit (equating to an hour for single sided DVD) meaning this must be encoded at a rate of circa 5Mbit whereas the BBC HD channel on the freeview trial and on satellite used 18Mbit.

Pretty pointless squishing a good HD single up that much?

Sun: MoD has Bond/Potter/Klingon cloaking device

BigTim
Paris Hilton

invisibility

Presumably this is the same technology Paris Hilton and Brtiney Spears have had built into their underwear?

Racist Reg hacks slammed for 'vitriolic hatred'

BigTim

@Adrian Jones RE: "Owen Glydwr"

You seem to have missed the point.

" *Owain* Glyndŵr" was the person you describe.

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

Still no idea why he'd have a beer named after him in Olde Enlgishe language or what "Lechyd da" is supposed to mean.

I didn't find the original article offensive, D-Bevan was way overracting.

The stupid jibes afterwards were just that and made the Reg look stupid and ignorant (as do many of the comments that have followed e.g. : "gutteral language").

BigTim

OK D.Bevan was over the top but compounding the article with

with further ignorant jibes has made the Reg writer look the stupid one

Who was "Owen Glyndwr"? Why does he have an Olde Englishe titled beer named after him and what on earth is "Lechyd da" supposed to mean?

I suppose the basis of most predjudice is ignorance.

Cymru am byth.