Posted in Laptop computers are crap
And another thing
Why is it virtually impossible to find a laptop with a stereo line-in socket and decent audio?
Posts by Simon Harris
165 posts • joined Thursday 1st March 2007 00:04 GMT
The page at http://www.ominous-valve.com/pancam.html has a list of the filter specs.
Why would you want to limit yourself to the limited gamut and issues that go with a Bayer filtered CCD image, when, with the right filters and optical elements you can image all the way from near ultraviolet to deep infrared?
Posted in 75,000 Raspberry Pi baked before August
Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”
"Does anyone else thing that devil head looks more like a car (with a mouth) approaching?"
Maybe it's Christine, then it works whichever way you look at it!
Re: You're not wrong about the date.
oops... an E fell off somewhere!
Re: You're not wrong about the date.
Uh... if you'd been paying attention, you'd have realised that the 'feature' in that little digression was the ability to burn out the CRT drive electronics by messing with the video timing registers - nothing to do with floppy drives.
While the original PET 2001 series systems did have an integral tape drive, there were plenty of floppy drive and a few hard drive options for PETs, linked via the IEE488 bus.
Re: You're not wrong about the date.
"It was the first time you could easily damage a PC by programming. It was possible to program incorrect graphics timing and blow the monitor fuse :)"
I seem to remember IBM PC monitors could be burned out quite easily with a few incorrect settings in the 6845 video timing generator too (I managed it once on a Victor VPC2 PC clone - oops). However, Commodore PETs were first documented as having this 'feature' some years before
Re: 3 month mission....
When estimating the longevity of these missions, I'm sure the engineers must follow Scotty's repair estimation philosophy (although in reverse!)...
Kirk: How much refit time before we can take her out again?
Scotty: Eight weeks, sir... but ya don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ya in two.
Kirk: Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
Scotty: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
Posted in Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros
Re: Nascom
Shame on you. No mention of the Nascom. Started as a comuter kit, the Nascom 1. I bought a Nascom 2 around 1982 and spent several days will a soldering iron putting it together.
Well, technically the Nascom 2 was a computer of the 1970s (release date Dec. 1979 according to various sources)
Posted in Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros
Re: The Atom was more a system 3
I think the only chip that only really worked loose in my Atom was the 6847 video controller.
The standard Atom produced a monochrome output, but the second version of the colour-encoder card required pulling the 6847, plugging the colour-encoder into its socket on a 40pin header, and plugging the 6847 into the colour-encoder card. The whole rather heavy assembly then hung upside-down from the motherboard held only by the 40 pin DIP socket.
The header had quite chunky pins that buggered the socket a bit, so when you said 'sod this - I'm going back to black and white' after watching the colour encoder fall out numerous times, the main board socket never held the 6847 as tightly again!
Posted in Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros
Re: Oric 1 - some inaccuracies
Ahh... now you tell me!
Could never work out why my printer dropped characters when it was plugged into the Oric, but worked fine with my Atom.
Re: I remember seeing this
My TV had 4 colour coded buttons for teletext that I think corresponded to 'Next Page', 'Previous Page', 'Home' and 'Index' (something like that anyway), and when you were on a page, the pages corresponding to the coloured buttons were cached in the background, so as long as you didn't step forwards or backwards too fast it gave the impression of being instant.
Re: Poor graphics
I remember at one time Channel 4 used to broadcast teletext test pages.
Some of these pages had enhanced functions (if you could get them) that I think included:
enhanced graphics
support for different languages with alternate character sets (I think mostly for European accented characters)
some sort of palette mapping to adjust the colours available on a page.
I think at the time my TV could do the alternate character sets, but not a lot else.
Lawsuit...
If the old lady now walks into the glass door at a Samsung store while she's waiting for her nose to heal,
will Apple sue for infringing their patient ?
If this goes to court...
... I suppose Apple will be up before the Beak.
Stickers...
Clearer stickers were said to have been put in place on stores this weekend.
Errm...
Wouldn't it have been better to use more opaque stickers?
Re: More a tele-operated manipulator.
"So having built a robot it then operates as effectively a remote manipulator with a set of software limit switches on it's motion."
Not really - for the 'hands-on' philosophy, the surgeon's hands are on the surgical tool itself, so the surgeon maintains direct contact with the tools and patient. Since the tool is connected to the robot, as the surgeon manipulates it, it backdrives the robot and the robot senses the position of the tool and forces applied to determine whether and how much it should push back to keep the tool within the correct area.
"Patients come in all shapes and sizes. They move (hopefully not too much) when your working on them and in extreme cases their bits might be in the wrong place to the standard model (EG the heart)."
Surgical planning can be done from scans of the patient for true patient specific surgery to take into account the variation in shapes and sizes and bits not conforming to the standard model. And, yes, bits of patient do move during surgery, but there are tracking devices that can monitor that and update the plan to take into account the movement (admittedly easier for orthopaedic surgery where we're talking about solid objects than for soft tissue which can distort).
Re: More a tele-operated manipulator.
Ivan, yes it was. The link I put in the earlier post to Imperial College gives an overview of the design and operation of our Probot prostate resection robot.
As we were doing this about 16-17 years ago (in fact, I came into the project part way through its progress and it actually started something over 20 years ago) it was quite early on in the history of surgical robotics when a variety of approaches were being tried - and in the case of the Probot we chose hands-free operation.
One of the observations of the surgical pilot study we did with it was that some surgeons were reluctant to let go of the robot once they had steered it into the prostate and locked its position ready to start the surgery - it's quite a leap of faith to let go and leave it to get on with things!
More recent surgical robots that we worked on at Imperial College (and indeed, I still work on) were geared to a more cooperative approach between the surgeon and the robot - something we called 'hands-on robotics' or 'active constraints' whereby the robot knows the volume of material that needs to be removed, but rather than moving on its own, the surgeon pushes the robot's tip (or 'end-effector') around (typically the cutting device), but when he or she reaches the edge of the cutting volume the robot pushes back preventing the cutting tip from moving outside of the surgery volume.
By the way, Ivan, you weren't the Tomorrow's World reporter who covered the Probot were you?
'First' prostate snip???
Pahh!!
here's one we made earlier... in about 1995 and even featured on Tomorrow's World.
This was a true active robot, once the region to be removed was marked out on ultrasound scans, the robot chuntered away removing that region itself.
Beer!
Apparently "1 Average Amount of Urine Produced/Human/Day is equivalent to 4.226752818811 Can of Beer"
So, that's why lager is sold in packs of 4!
Re: zzzzzzz
"I tried it once"...
That's once more than me! But then I've never had any i-thingy or android device on which to play it!
Re: the so called protection..
I think these'll be the little buggers they need...
http://pdf.directindustry.com/pdf/acksys/rj45-connector-with-built-in-line-isolation-transformer-lf1s028-for-cometh-embd/8580-61687.html
There does look to be a bit more to it than just cutting out the spikes!
Re: I suppose it's too late to email the customers
"I forgot to add that a case for this board should surely be known as a Pi Tin."
If I were to leave the top off the case, would it be a Raspberry Flan instead of a Pi ?
I believe 22nd July is already designated Pi Approximation Day
http://piapproximationday.com/
"lunged for her BlackBerry"
Is this a new euphemism?
Or stand very still at one of Gunther von Hagens' exhibitions ... and then jump out at people.
"If you can't measure the price of the garment in tens of pounds per square foot, it will never be bought by a woman."
Whenever I've bought clothes for women, it seems like the price is in inverse proportion to the acreage. Sensible sized clothes usually have a reasonable price, but those skimpy little numbers seem to cost a fortune!
Couldn't help reading it with the voice of Kenny Everett's Cupid Stunt going through my head...
'it was all done in the best possible taste'
Posted in StreetView disappears Dutch office tower
The Winchester
Here's a couple from Shaun of the Dead land...
The Winchester...
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=51.477895,-0.047625&spn=0.004838,0.009763&sll=51.478888,-0.047660&layer=c&cid=17968113403682745607&cbp=13,4.66,,0,11.82&cbll=51.477915,-0.047609&t=h&panoid=HLZahQjUu2w08ypUvLxkaw&z=17
Obviously it's seen better days as it's boarded up after the zombie attacks... but take one step backwards and... it's been converted into posh houses (unlike zombies, property developers can't be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain)
and just down the road...
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=51.479926,-0.047754&spn=0.004838,0.009763&sll=51.478888,-0.047660&layer=c&cid=17968113403682745607&cbp=13,141.68,,0,26.31&cbll=51.47988,-0.04756&t=h&z=17&panoid=C2ZatjzNIohS7xqUe-7x8A
A pavement full of schoolchildren... but take one step back and what happened to the kids? - did the zombies eat them? ... spooky!
I think Orange got there first...
My phone seems to be invisible to their microwaves half the time!
Posted in Starship Voyager dumped into skip
who actually said this first?
I've seen it attributed to various people (George Bernard Shaw and Benjamin Franklin amongst others) - Does anyone know where it originated?
Well, if international leaders could settle their disputes with flame-wars on their own private little facebook instead of taking them into the real world, I'd drink to that!
Posted in Facebook litters Timeline with apps
"why you though"
D'oh...
is there a name for the law that states 'while commenting on someone's grammar or spelling, one is bound to make a mistake, oneself!' ?
If there isn't, there should be!
Posted in Facebook litters Timeline with apps
I expect you're thinking app is a contraction of application, and the missing letters should be replaced by an apostrophe, however it's a clipped word - all the missing letters are from one end of it, in which case you don't need the apostrophe. Contractions generally have letters taken out of the middle.
For example fo'c'sle is a contraction of forecastle.
However, you wouldn't say bra' as a shortened version of brassiere (or bra's for the plural), so in the same way apps is the plural of applications, rather than app's.
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node20.html .. for your education.
Oh.. now I re-read your post more closely, I have no idea why you though Application's should have an apostrophe!
Recently discovered historical records show that devious ancient Sumerians used to take their clay tablets out of the box, and replace them with iPads before taking the box back to the shop for a refund.
Not sure that 'smelling of piss and meths', 'journalists' and 'minions of organised crime' are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Posted in HMV faces the music after crap Christmas
"Asked how HMV would differentiate itself from the existing players in the tech store space – PC World et al – HMV PR chief Gennaro Castaldo told El Reg that its more centrally located..."
I guess that's true... my local HMV has a PC World one side of it and a Maplin the other. Not sure that combination's going to help it sell more gadgets though!
Posted in HMV faces the music after crap Christmas
Well, the one in Wimbledon has opened a cinema on top of it.
Pretty much next door to the Odeon.
Posted in HMV faces the music after crap Christmas
A grizzly sales drop is what happens when you're trying to operate in a bear market.
Posted in Facebook VERY SLOWLY rolls out Timeline
There's also the somewhat Spartan mobile version of Facebook which works in normal browsers too
m.facebook.com
which doesn't have the timeline, and provides a low-bandwidth version of what everyone's up to.
Posted in iPad SURVIVES FALL FROM SPACE
Huh?
I don't know that
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I assume by 'box' Jonathanb meant the packaging which he said looked ok, rather than the drive's enclosure!
It would be a pretty poor warranty if you voided it by getting the product out of its packaging to use it!
I have a Minolta Xg camera that let you record your own shutter sound.
For a lark I got mine to say 'Paedo' every time I took a picture.
Then a girl friend was going on holiday and wanted to borrow a camera. Two days later I got a text asking 'Why does the camera keep saying paedo?' - oops, guess I forgot to reset the sounds!
more info..
There's some more technical info about the sensors here...
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3A881370e5-a10f-46be-bab0-bf60fa08b425
A larger version of the image from the Aviation Week site is here.
http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/10/9/9a16a33e-462e-4149-a9a8-5f2e11c2c6b6.Full.jpg
It shows more information on the thumbnails on the left and seems to indicate that individual sensors are about 5Mpixels ( 2592x1944) and that video feeds are 640x480 pixel sub-windows of these.
Life is not like StarTrek
Are we talking beardy Riker or shaved Riker Star Trek?
Posted in SSDs choked by crummy disk interfaces
Must be too close to christmas
I could have sworn that read...
It's using sata over mincepie
Probably no more than buying a new set of inkjet cartridges for their printer!
Opinion
David McLeman
My 25 years of comical IT buzzwords
Tim Worstall
Time to take a sniff at the coffee, perhaps
Chris Mellor
Will they have to drag him back like last time?
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