* Posts by Robert E A Harvey

3010 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2006

Year of the Penguin - el Reg's 2011 Linux-land roundup

Robert E A Harvey
FAIL

Perfectly happy to only buy working printers. But it does annoy me that printer manufacturers won't tell you which they are.

Even worse, magazine/web site reviews don't every try printers with linux. Even el-reg falls down in this regard.

Robert E A Harvey

@AnotherNetNarcissist

True. And I am using it.

But as you say it is not FLOSS - I would have poreferred an OS solution, for the normal reasons.

Robert E A Harvey
Coat

>in a stand up fight between Android and Wayland I'd bet on Android.

I'm going to bet on the bear. Never forget there might be a bear in the cupboard.

Robert E A Harvey

two minds

I've been a perfectly satisfied Linux user for a very long time. But the desktop developments are beginning to annoy me.

I'm X fan, and have often used the redirection abilities to remote displays for navigation and science systems. I got on perfectly well with the basic windows managers.

Now we have fantastically elaborate desktops, dbus, half a dozen sound managers, and hardware integration is no better. Perhaps the effort has gone in the wrong place?

Half of me thinks that the changes for Gnome3 and the new KDE are good, because innovation is good. But you tell me now that they are copying apple, not breaking new ground? All I know is that things get more complex, harder to understand, but not /better/. I feel much the same about Unity: change is often good, but it isn't working out.

I like the E17 desktop, and get on with that. I like LKCFE or whatever it is called, I use that on a Suse netbook.

Laptops have been getting some really dismal screens lately (768, 800 vertical pixels in many cases) and if people need to rip up and start again, why not change to a left hand menu to restore much needed vertical screen space (I know about Unity)?

But really I feel that the Desktop problem is largely solved until someone comes up with a dramatically different paradigm (like merging the desktop screen and two or three tablets into a single environment). Can we not get some of this astonishingly skilled development effort into finishing a few applications instead? Fix the bugs in Libreoffice/openoffice. Finish at least one of the CAD projects. Why do we have 6 desktops and only one Gimp? Skype has stolen the public space that GPL started. Voice recognition? Access for the blind?

Can we fix all the scruffiness about power up/hibernate/sleep/restore?

How about fixing the printer problem with something similar to ndis netowrk driver handling? get all those dodgy lexmark printers working just using their windows driver disk?

Stop re-inventing the front offside wheel. Fix the other wheels as well.

Apple accused of starving French reseller of hot stock

Robert E A Harvey

it may or may not be illegal, but I would have thought a reseller would have a decent supply agreement with terms and conditions enforceable in a civil case.

If they can't sue, they should fire their lawyers.

Verizon retreats on ‘convenience fee’ for online bill payment

Robert E A Harvey

>eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time

s/need/greed/

Apple to appeal Italian warranty fine

Robert E A Harvey
Unhappy

Well, yes. In fact el Reg seems to have been so taken aback that they failed to establish what grounds Apple think they have for such an appeal.

Will TWO next-gen iPads be unveiled at January's iWorld?

Robert E A Harvey

If high pixel counts catch on we might finally get away from laptops 790 or 900 pixels high

Sony NEX-C3 compact system camera

Robert E A Harvey

I still don't get this category. Zoom, super zoom and bridge cameras seem much more appropriate for the intended market.

Apple's TV killer 'on shelves by summer 2012'

Robert E A Harvey

old joak

PAL: because of lack of bandwidth the colours can't fully saturate. Hence Pink-Amber-Lilac

(Yellow was a subtractive term)

NTSC: the hue signal was transmitted so far from the carrier that it was Never Twice Same Colour

The French and Russians used SECAM: System Entirely Contrary (to the) American Method

Robert E A Harvey

trims

There were indeed loads of back panel trimmers, the most famous being horizontal & vertical hold.

Inside there were loads of really cool ones, like linearity & keystoning. Electrical & magnetic focus.

Microsoft mum on leaked Phone OS plans

Robert E A Harvey

I was recently in the Philippines, where Skype is a way of life for families talking to fathers working abroad. I have heard a lot of complaints about bad audio, dropped connections, and not being able to make video calls any more.

Skype is having problems. I doubt they are caused by M$ but they might be caused by being taken over. I wonder if it is now harder to get money to get new hardware into the servers?

Robert E A Harvey

I don't think M$ wants to kill Nokia. They need Nokia to build and sell WP7 phones.

Robert E A Harvey

@Jim

That there is no point in trotting out awards as any arguement at all.

Robert E A Harvey

Awards

"Titanic" got Oscars. Didn't stop it being a crap film. Come to that "Avatar" got oscars despite having no sensible story line at all, apart from "Wheeee..." And don't let me get all Kermode over "Pirates of the Carribean"...

Robert E A Harvey

Welcome to Great Smell of Brut

Thanks for signing up just to say that.

Robert E A Harvey
Facepalm

If Genuine?

"leaked to Wmpoweruser.com" says it all. At the risk of Mr Boobies telling me I need to see a doctor.

Jobs' 'nuclear war' is not doing Apple any good - analyst

Robert E A Harvey
Thumb Up

@LarsG

I quite like pilchards. Apparently they are the same fish the Portuguese sell as Sardine.

Japanese boffins crack arse-based ID recognizer

Robert E A Harvey
Headmaster

You still read Bede, as it was written?

Um. Yes. I was doing exactly that half an hour ago, oddly.

>Chaucer gets you all titillated

No, but the odd wry smile.

New ATLAS particle part of 'everyday mass'

Robert E A Harvey

I've always imagined that the adjective was needed because under a desk somewhere, perhaps pedal powered, was a 'small hadron collider'

Lumia sales fail to set world alight

Robert E A Harvey

Astroturfers

I wonder if the astroturfers ever report back to M$ what the rest of us are saying?

Robert E A Harvey

Only one buyer

Elop will balance the dismal performance and share price so that no-one else can splurge on the corpse of Nokia. Only M$ and Apple are likely to have the cash, and I don't think apple shareholders will be keen on buying an M$ house, and even if they think of it, Elop will be there to recommend acceptance to the Nokia board and shareholders.

Robert E A Harvey

@AC 12:44

to be fair, of the 3 lads I was working with two have now got their old blackberries back, and the third is using his privately owned iPhone with the company sim in it.

Robert E A Harvey

crikey. Razr coming up fast there.

Robert E A Harvey
Thumb Up

And thank you for my new fact for the day. 'Eggcorn'. Brilliant.

Robert E A Harvey

@AC

I've seen 2 WP7 adverts this year on UK telly, and several instances of the annoying one about dad & son both using W7 laptops.

I've seen loads of adverts at airports for iThings & Galaxy things. Not one for W7 or WP7 (Or playbook for that matter)

Robert E A Harvey

And not all sales are to people who want them. I recently worked with people from a huge Swedish multi-national who have all been given Lumia, [1] and who are all trying to give them back. One chap has had 3 fail in a month.

Now while there will be equally unwilling users of other brands, I doubt whether most Galaxy users are not volunteers.

[1] I assume the plural of Lumia is Lumia?

Inventor flames Reg, HP in memristor brouhaha

Robert E A Harvey

I am worried about losing the two-terminal part of the definition, but I don't know why.

Shareholders rage over Imation's incredible 88% plunge

Robert E A Harvey

At the end of the road I grew up on is an old Victorian building, now turned into flats.

At one time it was the country's largest manufacturer of blackboard chalk, and later produced yellow acrylic lenses for driving goggles.

Things change, this happens. Have you tried to buy a Gasogene lately?

Is Microsoft brewing a Win8, WinPho code merge?

Robert E A Harvey
Thumb Down

Surely 'min win' is as dead as winFS?

Robert E A Harvey

little consequence

apart from needing another few hundred memory chips...

Robert E A Harvey

which begs

which begs the question 'why?'

The Best of El Reg 2011 now on Kindle

Robert E A Harvey

Well, I'd pay a tenner a year to read el reg, so long as that bought a little bit of exclusivity - like the articles not going public till all subscribers had read them.

Robert E A Harvey

I don't know really. I just had a crawling in the neck, rather than a 'disgusted of Tonbride Wells' moment.

A little vulture cash-box icon would be nice, or a different colour or font. But I don't think its a big deal, just a dark thought. Your standards are your own.

Robert E A Harvey

Is it me, or is anyone else uncomfortable with el reg puffing product in the guise of news stories?

Bah, humbug! Virgin Media censors Charles D**kens

Robert E A Harvey

testing? that's what customers do, surely?

Google+ gets group vid, Nokia still has a Pulse

Robert E A Harvey
Thumb Up

Well, Quite.

E-book reader sales to boom as prices plunge

Robert E A Harvey

2nd hand trade

I can take old paper books to Oxfam, or to that most perfect of human endeavours, the second-hand book shop. I can exchange them in traveller's libraries in nicer hotels.

When I can do that with eBooks I will be interested.

I'd like to commend Scarthin Books, in Cromford. The Reader's Rest in Lincoln, and Robert Humm in Stamford.

Dell flees netbook market, dumps Minis

Robert E A Harvey
Unhappy

My mini-10 came with 'buntu 8.10, which I replaced with UNR - using it now. I bought it because it came without windows

TRhing is, nothing new has happened in this space since.

Robert E A Harvey

I have a 2133, and you are quite right. That and a mobo/bios problem that permenantly disconnects a sleeping hard disk& then locks the whole thing up

Google's Siri-a-like to be named 'Majel' after Trek actress

Robert E A Harvey

Sold

If it speaks with her voice, I'm sold.

A real start trek talking computer? How could I resist?

Paul Allen latest plan: Space rockets on MEGA PLANE

Robert E A Harvey

flying boats

When I were a lad there was a scifi story about using flying boats to get to orbit, slowly spiralling up from the earth's surface with a succession of different engines.

It took a school scienc teacher a few seconds to dismiss the idea in terms of amount of fuel. It takes a rocket 9 seconds to climb the gravity well. The 2 days of the flying boat, acquiring the same amount of potential energy would represent impossible amounts of fuel. This seems the same.

Apple's request for HTC ban delayed again

Robert E A Harvey

I'm sorry, but the headline is too obtuse for me. Is there an 'on' missing as word 3?

Wikipedia simplifies article editing for world+dog

Robert E A Harvey
FAIL

it's not the editing, its the editors

I think the huge number of good looking pages suggests the problem is not the editing.

I think that the nasty way that a few self-appointed people run roughshod over other's work is far more off-putting. I'm not going back, for a start.

Brits turned off by Smart TVs

Robert E A Harvey

Not wanted here

I have loads of ways to get on the interenet. If my TV offers me net access, but then only shows me a tiny part of it I shall regard it as broken.

Acer TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T 14in Core i5 notebook

Robert E A Harvey

when did a Core i5 become slow?

When they put windoze on it?

Robert E A Harvey

Yes, another mee-too clone with nothing unique about it

Robert E A Harvey
Thumb Down

Yet another nasty screen!

More than one pound per vertical pixel?

It's very clever to get an extra 1" onto the lid, but still with lower resolution than I was using in 2004?

Higgs boson hunters have god particle in their sights

Robert E A Harvey

115 to 131 MeV

That's a pretty big hole to keep searching in!

Microsoft beaten down 16pc on software sales to NHS

Robert E A Harvey
Coat

I pay for the NHS. Can I get that pricing?