@Law Re: I need to lie down somewhere...
I've read Gaiman.
I'd not heard of Palmer till this article.
I expect elReg knows its audience
Posts by Robert E A Harvey
3010 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2006
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Work for beer, Neil Gaiman's wife tells musicians
HP plots tablet comeback to penetrate biz world with slab
Friday 14th September 2012 19:48 GMT 
Erk?
What the blue blistering blazes is the business demand for a tablet?
I don't mean touch screens like warehousemen or doctors or van drivers, we have those gadgets already. Why the black japanese fire-baked enamel does a sales herbert or a management dwonk need a tablet?
They've already got a flaptop, and a crackberry and a deskweight, and probably an eyePhone. What on earth do they need to do that they can't do with that lot and can do only with a tablet?
Who's afraid of Windows 8? Trio leads Microsoft migration pack
One more try: Metro apps are now 'Windows Store' apps
Boffin named Jubb to fire whopping hybrid thruster
The iPHONE 5 UNDERMINES western DEMOCRACY: 5 reasons why
UK.gov blacklists Fujitsu from future contracts - report
There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button
Tuesday 11th September 2012 15:54 GMT
Re: Not this "pin everything to the taskbar" argument again
Yes, I not only like the Quick Launch, I have several of them.
And Yes, Put the task bar up the right hand side, and stretch it a bit, it makes lots of use of the widescreen layout, and lets me see a bit more of each document or spreadsheet.
Airbus predicts catapult takeoffs and formation flying by 2050
Tuesday 11th September 2012 15:43 GMT
@MJI Re: New York to San Francisco
"Proper not flying anymore airliner"
sad now.
Going back to the original topic, one of the ideas for HOTOL was a rocket-assisted take-off trolley, not unlike the catapault spoken of. Clever chaps.
Look at the bottom of http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bs9EbQ6pdRQC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=hotol+rocket+launch+trolley&source=bl&ots=v__JleYP5n&sig=3Mv2HHneRDJ5k2WuE0TmL_DoE5s&hl=en#v=onepage&q=hotol%20rocket%20launch%20trolley
Tuesday 11th September 2012 15:36 GMT
@ charles9 12:32 Re: My thoughts
The Swiss do quite well at running trains THROUGH mountains. OK, the present Gotthard was built before TGVs, but so what? With a known clear and safe run you could go faster through a tunnel. They are planning 250Km/h for the new Gotthard: http://www.alptransit.ch/en/project.html
The Channel Tunnel is quite long, although the Sei-kan is a mile or so more. I imagine that the USA can do 4 times the distance if it chose.
Biggest problem I see with tunnelling right through the Rockies are the fault lines. It's not very stable. You'd not want to re-align the tunnel every 10 years, and you might, just might, make california come loose and fall off.
You'd probably want to use tunneling to reduce the grades, rather than eliminate them altogether.
Sunday 9th September 2012 10:52 GMT
@Charles9 Re: Solar - oh FFS
>had better things to do than wait to get from point A to point B
Hmm.
I have spent over 20 years of my working life in the Merchant Navy, in one form or another: Bananna boats, Passenger liners, Research ships, Hydrography. One thing I am completely certain of. There is absolutely no "better thing to do" than to spend the last hour of the day leaning on the ship's rail watching the sun go down over the ocean, Or standing on the bridge watching the bow heave and pitch in a force 10 with mountainous seas.
Back when the Test Team went to Australia by ship they at least knew how far they had come, and by the time they got there the team bonding was pretty absolute. The whole of life is a journey, and it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
These days I jet all over the world commissioning giant things. The existance of jet travel at a moment's notice mean that our clients do not have to plan properly or be well organised. Compare that with the 18th century when "Mr Boulton's man" was sent out from Cornwall with a sack of gold coins to prepare for the arrival of the iron bits of a beam engine. That had to be properly planned and executed!
Saturday 8th September 2012 20:45 GMT
New York to San Francisco
...is the perfect route for a proper high speed or maglev train service.
The South Korean government is planning, when their re-unification eventually occurs, a line from Seoul to Moscow. I met the chap planning it.
on Jun 4, 1876 the "Transcontinental express" did NY to SF in 83 hours, coal fired and hand stoked. Today it takes over 140. Doesn't sound like progress to me. The rail distance is something like 3,400 miles. Were that all French TGV standard it would take around 17 hours. The technology to get that below 10 hours is either known or imminent. For heavens sake, the old British Rail 225 sets from the late 1980s could do it in 22 hours, at least a few times. Virgin's Pendolinos could do it in 27, although It might take longer as I think they might have to stop for a lube break at some point!
By the time fossil fuels expire we might be very pleased to take 24 hours for a journey that would take 4 to 6 months on foot.
I'll get me coat. It probably still has a 1968 combined volume in the pocket.
Saturday 8th September 2012 09:52 GMT
Re: Solar - oh FFS
I've been travelling around the world for around 5 decades, am old enough to have flown in a scheduled route in a Dakota and a DeHavilland Rapide.
And I'm about sick of it. My fervent hope is that we can't find a replacement for fossil fuels and have to go back to travelling by sailing ship, a genuinely civilised form of transport which doesn't involve being groped by security staff every 14 yards through the port.
HP preps designer desktops for Windows 8
Tuesday 11th September 2012 15:19 GMT
Re: Screen resolution
My point is most of that.
1. I ggoled extensively before commenting, and found something like 50 stories, none of which mentioned the resolution, suggesting it was not in the original press release, and therefore that HP were looking at their shoes a bit on that aspect. Neither the HP web site nor the press release page mentioned the resolution, even to the point of using the meaningless "HD".
2. Yes, I think that in 2012 1080 vertical is rather feeble on a 23 inch screen. And definitely a major let-down in what is supposed to be a premium product. 'Designer'? ho hum.
3. No, I do believe it, unfortunately. The hardware people have been letting us down rather badly in this respect.
4. Yes. There is a long tradition of journalists asking awkward questions instead of paste-pot re-use of a press release, and I had sort of hoped that El Reg might live up to its subversive self.
I'm guessing your search success came after a few hundred people had actually asked HP and the results had come out.
Tuesday 11th September 2012 06:30 GMT
HSE
$MEGACORP made me do the 'sitting in a chair' training module again. It included the EU workstation directive stuff, about matching screen height to eye level. I am 1.96m tall If I follow all the recommendations I need two yellow pages under each desk leg, and three under the monitor which is already jacked up to wobble-matic levels.
as you say, an AIO is as bad as a laptop.
iPad no flight risk says Federal Aviation Authority
Tuesday 11th September 2012 11:25 GMT
Re: Isn't it about attention?
I have often heard cabin staff say to people that they must remove thier earphones during the landing phase because of this idea of being able to hear announcements.
But I have never ever seen them wake up a sleeping passenger at the same point in the flight.
<- some of them are not bright, of course
Gov IT bods must shield their budgets from gov's knife – Socitm
Everything Everywhere swept away by its own 4G hype tsunami
Tuesday 11th September 2012 11:17 GMT
Yawn.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9535265/Revealed-The-16-cities-that-will-get-4G-connectivity-by-the-end-of-2012.html
"EE says its 4G mobile broadband network will reach 98 per cent of the
UK population by the end of 2014. Here are the cities that will be
covered by the network by the end of 2012. "
and it is the usual suspects all over again. Ho hum.
Why not do something clever and bring connectivity to places that don't have it?
Windows 8 to grab iPad market share wrested back from Android
Ten digital radios to suit all budgets
Amazon: Pay more for Kindle Fire, smoke ads from slabs
Build a bonkers home cinema
FCC to TV broadcasters: Ready, set ... give your spectrum up
Saturday 8th September 2012 20:19 GMT
Pedantry
It's MF up to 3MHz, so you could say that the HF band is only 27MHz.
2.1GHz is part of of the 300MHz-3GHz UHF band according to the ITU
Traditionally microwaves start in the 3GHz to 30GHz SHF band.
See http://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/v/R-REC-V.431-7-200005-I!!PDF-E.pdf
(I am not responsible for the multiple plings, they did that all by themselves!)
Intel rolls eyes at flaccid PC biz, cuts $1bn off expected sales
The world's first Windows Phone 8 hands on – what's it like?
Friday 7th September 2012 22:29 GMT
Re: Never ever, EVER again
I had a 6340 as a replacement for my failed and much missed palm V. I grew to quite like the idea of a phone, PDA, camera, and music player all in one.
The problem was the damn thing didn't work. I had to reboot it several times a day, cold boot it a couple of times a week, and could not depend on it ringing when someone wanted to talk to me, or knowing where my contact list was when I wanted to talk to someone else. Even the idea of syncing with the supplied copy of outlook was beyond it.
So yes. Not ever again. Once bitten twice shy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
