* Posts by Robert E A Harvey

3010 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2006

TI acquires National Semiconductor for $6.5bn

Robert E A Harvey

Blimy, yes

I built a controller for a rising-quadrant receipt printer out of a scamp. I think it was a 8050 SC/MP-1. No stack pointer, no subroutine calls-and-return. Good enough though.

Robert E A Harvey
Unhappy

off the radar

Even a decade ago no-one would have dared to imagine this. Now the importance of the component industry is lost in the glare from Intel, Apple, et.al, and the politicians are less likely to cut up rough.

To their eternal shame.

This deal is as significant as M$/Nokia as signalling the decline of the west. Lights out, lads.

Ex-director permanently banned from revealing confidential info

Robert E A Harvey

for glods sake

It's not a pharmaceutical, or a method of 3-d printing titanium.

It's a five quid golfing gimmick gadget, for people who are already too lazy to carry a set of clubs.

is it really worth the bother?

Google may face 'broad US antitrust probe'

Robert E A Harvey
Coat

Is it just me?

I read the title as 'Broad US antithrust probe' and my eyes started to water.

Put that white coat away!

Floating Image

Robert E A Harvey
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Economic theory

Is that the Moderatrix in the pictures?

Virally spreading scam spreads over Twitter

Robert E A Harvey
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err..

Am I allowed to burst out laughing yet?

'Yuri Gagarin' blasts off to ISS

Robert E A Harvey
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My Hero

I've always wanted to name something after Yuri. I guess a soyuz is as good a tribute as any.

Had Sergej Korolëv lived I can't believe that Russia would not have got to the Moon, and Mars. I am so glad they are still providing launchers and keeping the dream alive.

Penguin Computing overclocks Opterons for Wall Street

Robert E A Harvey
Stop

meta-stable world

I am increasingly alarmed by the idea that the success or failure of vast financial services depends on a few nanoseconds on clock edges. And now the cost of n* 126 watts over n*95 watts can tip that balance back the other way?

Does no-one else think something is out of control here? This is some sort of something-out-of-nothing flim-flam? It seems to me like the Laplace Transform of a ponzi scheme, escalating infinitesimals rather than volumes.

Oh, and it also seems like cheating. No-one made anything new, grew anything, or improved the lot of the masses. They just stuck a waterwheel in the flow of real commerce and are leeching off what other people do. Parasites.

Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

Robert E A Harvey

ta

so why all the apocalyptic panicking?

Robert E A Harvey
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lots of talk but

No-one has explained how Unity integrates with GDM. On nearly every linux system I've used you can install alternative desktops and switch between them at the login screen. No-one in any review has told me whether Unity works like that, or whether Gnome, KDE, etc. become mysteriously unavailable.

Season of TV shows blown out of cloud... for good

Robert E A Harvey

then time to start asking for copies off some of the TV stations

And how do these idiots propse proving its their copyright? maybe the TV stations have won some IP

Samsung BD-D6900 3D Blu-ray player and DVR combo

Robert E A Harvey

Play it again...Samsung

This is why I read the reviews. Never likely to buy stuff, but I love the throw-away irreverence.

Excellent

April Fools Day's Finest

Robert E A Harvey
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Another one

http://marcelgagne.com/content/microsoft-buys-open-source-reactos-123-billion

"Microsoft Buys Open Source ReactOS For $12.3 Billion"

Robert E A Harvey

Shamelessly knicked.

Chap on usenet posted this:

https://groups.google.com/group/uk.rec.sheds/msg/0b2081dede6f645a?hl=en

( suggestion that Apple had installed a speak-your-weight machine app on every ipod and iphone overnight, and to try it out put yours on the floor and stand on it)

Ten... tech treats for mum

Robert E A Harvey

if you even have a mother for that matter.

Didn't one of Pterry's villains say "I 'ad a muvver once. I fink I et her"?

Chilean clock-cooking could cause computer chaos

Robert E A Harvey

Space 1999

Flimsy Plotlines? not as bad as the scenery and the control consoles.

Robert E A Harvey

How does that work?

Quite well.

You agree to meet someone at 9:00 on Monday.

It's monday, you get up at 06:00, wash, get the bus and meet him at 9:00.

The government announces that on Saturday the clocks will change. On Saturday you change your clocks. On Monday you get up at 06:00, wash, get the bus and meet him at 9:00.

See, no drama.

Robert E A Harvey

sigh

The morons will no doubt do it again. They were talking about repeating the bst in winter gag a few months ago.

Why don't people just get up when they want? if changing the clocks makes all get up an hour earlier that makes us sheep, not citizens.

Microsoft: IE9 not yet 'broadly' available

Robert E A Harvey

erk?

1.04% for Java ME?

Really?

Tesla Motors sues BBC for defamation

Robert E A Harvey

Hmm

I'm tempted to join the "It's a comedy show" comments, but in this case I actualy thought it was a nasty hatchett job and a bit put up. They've fixed petrol cars after breaking them, and re-tested them.

I think in this case my feelings are with Tesla, although I do think that suing is blunt instrument.

Oh, and @MisestoPisces, yes. Clarkson is a twat. Hammond is a pillock, and I quite like James May, when he isn;t playing the buffoon.

Dixons whacked by profit warning

Robert E A Harvey

The failings of futuremaths

A large, long-established retailer with a simple, uneveolving, business plan incorrectly guessed that their sales would go up during a recession, and look like idiots because of it.

Yet people in padded chairs can predice "107%" increase in sales of apple products 3 years hence with no idea how apple may change their business plan in the meantime.

Predictions now are no more worthwhile than they were from Nostradamus.

Carriers vs cops: Australia's spectrum conundrum

Robert E A Harvey

I don't get this

If you want to know the wavelength of a TV band signal, go look at a TV antenna.

Is this band really appropriate for pocket equipment?

Nokia deal to 'rocket Windows Phone 7 past iPhone'

Robert E A Harvey

bwahaha!

Another money-spinning act of fawning sycophancy by the department of wishful thinking.

I'd like to add my own predictions that in 3 years time:

* Unemployment in Teeside will have fallen to 0.1%

* Stilton cheese will be outselling Brie throughout Europe

* Gordon Brown will have regained the Labour leadership and won a General election.

Microsoft man riles update-hungry Windows Phone 7 users

Robert E A Harvey
FAIL

I still don't understand

Why the update mechanism wan't tested while the OS was being developed, & why the new updates can't be tested before publishing them.

MS plans response to HP's webOS ... in 2013

Robert E A Harvey

Smoke or Vapour

Is this Vapourware, or the future of a once-mighty empire going up in Smoke.

How can it be that with that many highly paid brains in one building they havn't had something ready for five years?

It is customary for commentards like me to suggest that M$ never innovates. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the evidence.

I said 3 years ago that Vista would cost them the farm, and I still believe it. Have you heard the mutterings from anyone who pays 450 quid for a laptop with W7 basic and then faces a bill for half as much again to make it do something? or people who discover 30 days in just what that "demo" version of office was really all about? Office + W7 premium can come to more than the cost of the laptop, the bastards.

This organisation has seriously lost the plot, and if they think they can derail the whole industry for the 13th time with promises of vapourware at some distant future date, then I think they will learn that the industry finally grew up. I really, really, home that they are doomed, and doomed properly.

A pox on them, the whole miserable crew of them.

Open sourcers urged to adopt dancing poultry license

Robert E A Harvey

"people with disabilities or cultural obligations"

I can work round this. We need another clause:

* People for whom the chicken dance presents physical or cultural challenges may substitute any other activity considered similarly ludicrous in the appropriate culture or lifestyle. Nudity is not necessarily discouraged, but should be used to produce hilarity, not arousal. footnote: stage arrows through the head were never funny.

Duke Nukem Forever DELAYED

Robert E A Harvey

Dyslexia?

I read the headline as "Duke Nukem Delayed FOREVER" and was completely unsurprised.

Judge to music industry: 'Worth trillions? Forget it'

Robert E A Harvey

oh dear

I'm afraid that you lot must be getting to me.

I spent ages thinking "If you want a puppy, ask for a horse." was some sort of sexual innuendo, then realised that it was about a teenage girl really asking for a puppy.

Hangs head in shame. wanders off.

Robert E A Harvey

Glod, no!

... and, since I could be listening to music a lot more, they could bill me for the music I didn't listen to after not buying it from them? Don't give them ideas

Paramount buries Dune remake

Robert E A Harvey

Dune

>The planned Paramount Pictures movie adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune has been cancelled.

Thank christ for that. They bolloxed it up badly enough the first time. It's a massive, intricate, saga that you don't come to understand until quite a long way in. It's a book, not a film, leave it alone!

New movie gives Yuri Gagarin's view of historic 1961 mission

Robert E A Harvey

I remember

I was just 13 when this happened, and had to explain the concept of orbits to the whole class - and the teacher - after we had heard about it that morning. No fax machines or internet in 1961, the education department in Chelmsford ran some banda sheets off, and sent men round on motorbikes to deliver one to each school. The head came and read them to each class in turn. I knew the news before I got home, which startled the family.

SPACE! someone had been into space! You know, the thrill of it never leaves me. I spent 25 years of my life as a seaman, partly because of the wanderlust that awoke in me. If they asked me to board a rocket ship instead I'd be there tomorrow.

Ellison drops iceberg in front of HP's unsinkable Itanic

Robert E A Harvey

shitty thing to do

Not only giving HP a shoeing, but also making Intel's announcements for them. Big business really is a forest of bastards, isn't it?

This has all the hallmarks of manipulation. Whatever Intel's policy on the itanic (kudos!) was, I bet that by tomorrow it will be whatever Elison says it is.

I feel a bit like I did when Dr Beeching closed the railways. Let down, mourneful, sad and full of rage. For Glod's sake, surely diversity is good, not bad? Who is going to do a Flanders and Swann for cpu architectures? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU

Firefox 4 debuts: The last kitchen sink release

Robert E A Harvey

That's queer

I reported exactly that behaviour in firefox 0.<something> and the bug sorting person said it couldn't possibly do that. I've seen it since, too, in other things like Serif pageplus. Serif say its nothing to do with them, it must be a windows problem.

Robert E A Harvey

"The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on..."

As you say. Crap. As long as the OS can get your image off the hard disk and into ram, and connect you to a few network sockets and HID things, the rest could be up to your browser. If chrome & firefox can do it, refusal by microsoft is either lies or manipulation. Or both.

Digesting the Budget: First-belch reactions

Robert E A Harvey

"Danny Alexander...

> assured the BBC that the extra tax on oil extraction would not be countered by oil companies simply putting up prices at the pump"

As if they would! The very idea!

Google plugs new-age telephony into US carrier phones

Robert E A Harvey

yac

Fair comment.

I only gave the number to my customers and employers. It worked for me. Mine was an 0845 number but it still cost them 12p/min (of which I got 2p). being paid to listen to yer boss ain't bad.

'course, said customers and employers were shipowners and oil companies, so I need not feel bad!

Robert E A Harvey

"the new-age telephony web"

queer, that. I've been able to do all those things with a yac number, since before the millenium. voicemail to mp3, fax to pdf, switching calls around multiple phones? yac

Normal disclaimer

Thrutu

Robert E A Harvey
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...only slight annoyance...

I may have spotted another. Are those ADVERTS along the bottom of the screen shots?

MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS

Robert E A Harvey

Economic theory

I thought they had sacked all the programmers?

If they do release a meego tablet I will be tempted to buy one just to annoy Elop.

Porsche punts e-car pre-orders

Robert E A Harvey

easy, there

So saving the planet, is down to rich people then? Good. I'm busy with just paying the bills as it is.

Hamburg vice girls to be serviced by cable car

Robert E A Harvey

Oh?

Is there now a 500metre high club?

Intel eyes up HP chief for top job

Robert E A Harvey

Interesting

If HP really are tooling up to start an anti-microsoft insurgency, having a serious link with Intel won't harm either party.

BOFH: In distributed denial

Robert E A Harvey

I recall

One disaffected youth dripping superglue into ball-style mouses on the management floor, and another doing neat tricks with the photocopier paper. screen printing rude words into a whole stack with lemonade. Once dried the copies were fine, but if you stuck them back in to make secondary copies the rude words fluoresced and came out vivid black. Nowadays you can use a stencil and a security aerosol.

Then there was the autocorrect gag - an autocorrect file on the secretaries computer that changed the letters after the director's name - MBE became MZM and it was months before anyone noticed.

Group-buying deal for £99 iPhone 4 may have breached consumer laws

Robert E A Harvey
WTF?

Whot?

"may have breached consumer protection laws"

If they didn't, we need better laws!

Apple to sell 107m iPads in 2016

Robert E A Harvey

More futuremaths

How can they possibly justify "107m iPads in 2016" . I have no idea if I am going to have a job In a months ime, let alone five years.

(put hand in bran tub)

(bring out factoid)

(send invoice for "research")

Where do I sign up?

Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

Robert E A Harvey

timing

And, of course, the stability of both th MSF and 198KHz Droitwich carriers is well-known, and monitored by the NPL. It should be possible to 'dead reckon' timing between GPS fixes several weeks apart. Droitwich is controlled to ±1 part in 10^11

Sixth Japanese nuclear reactor loses cooling

Robert E A Harvey

Do I really need to use so much electricity?

And, of course, "Do We need so many children?"

Apple security update leaves iPhone 3G users unprotected

Robert E A Harvey

@SAP Bod

>what time span of official support you should expect for a non-shipping device?

In my view, length of warranty +one year. EU rules imply a 2-year warranty so that would probably be 3 years.

But I also favour a £10 per year subscription solution for up to 5 years.

That said, people often pass ex-contract phones onto relatives. If some vulnerability were being exploited that might lead to fraud or loss of money I would expect it either be fixed or a warning issued to stop using the devices, up to (something like) 6 years. Out of simple decency.

Dixons Advent Vega

Robert E A Harvey
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Crap? ?

What part of "Dixons" did you not spot?

Robert E A Harvey

returns?

>I imagine DSG have a large returns rate

So we can get them cheaper still? Oh no, it's Dixons, who tried to sell me a returned laptop for £2 less than a new one.