When Summer turns to Autumn, the leaves start falling and the evening nights start to have a little nip in the air, hey presto, a few well-placed sneezes up your arms and your short-sleeved top becomes full-length in the arm department.
Instead of DKNY, show a little biological chic with your NY3 wardrobe.
ASDA have a pocket-sized DAB radio for £32 that's just larger than a small box of matches. It's very plasticky but it works fine, provided the signal's good enough.
Mind you, it eats batteries and so I have just ordered some 1300mAh AAA rechargeables for it.
There IS a case for what DAB gives you - more radio stations - but that is not a thing specific to DAB. The real problems with the roll-out of DAB stack up as follows:
1) DAB was promoted as being superior to FM in terms of quality, but then the broadcasters started to tinker with bitrates on order to squeeze as many stations into the available bandwidth, even transmitting some music stations in mono, so that the quality was clearly inferior to FM. This has created a big credibility issue for DAB because the quality angle is still pushed towards an audience that has evidence to the contrary.
2) DAB reception is patchy in many areas, especially indoors. This may be mitigated when (if?) analogue is switched off and DAB transmissions get more power, but at the moment, for example, I can only receive about 50% of the available stations on my DAB kitchen radio - and if the weather is bad the error rate rockets so all I get is a burble.
3) DAB reception on public transport, especially trains, is crap. Well-paid city commuters would snap up a decent, working gadget but only AM and FM work well on the move.
4) The original DAB radios were expensive and also butt-ugly, looking like 'Practical Wireless' projects from the 70s. Many were also mono, with only one speaker - you paid extra for an add-on. These wooden-boxed radios appealed to early adopters and the curious, but the general public were not so enthusiastic. Recent designs are more sensible.
5) Portable DAB sets - especially the shirt-pocket sized ones - really really eat batteries. I'm lucky to get 4-6 hours out of a pair of good quality alkaline AAA cells. In fact, I have just ordered some 1300mAh AAA rechargeables because the cost to feed the radio with normal cells is stupid - you could easily spend more on cells in 3 weeks than the cost of the radio.
6) Getting a DAB radio for a car at a sensible price is pretty much impossible - and those who have them don't seem to be impressed with the reception and performance.
7) The technical spec for DAB is out of date already, but to replace it would mean admitting that the original design was not well thought out AND would force all current adopters to scrap their current kit; and no-one wants to be the one to announce that.
8) Many people take their own music with them and can pick and choose what they want to listen to. Why swap this for something that sounds worse and doesn't play what you want?
9) The number of mobile phones with DAB receivers is (I believe) 1 - and it's only available on one mobile network (Virgin). Having a mobile phone with DAB would give the service a *bit* of credibility, but would probably screw up battery life.
10) Here's the kicker: FM and AM 'just work' and very few have problems with the quality - there is no public tidal wave of protest demanding anything better and this leads to a sense that DAB is being pushed onto the public - which instantly gets people pissed off.
The current way forward for the broadcasters and politicians seems to be a defensive 'do nothing' while half-heartedly championing DAB, and no doubt there will be some form of mad scramble to do something half-assed when the analogue switch-off dates are imminent. There is an analogue trade-in promotion at the moment and it will be interesting to see what the take-up is.
Very recently, a Government source stated that the FM switch off would only happen when there was little demand for the service - which is a change from the previous 'rock solid' fixed date, but unless there is some serious push to improve DAB reception and produce a portable set with a sensible battery life, I fear we are going to bump along the 'do nothing' road for a long time.
There may be some merit in a hinge, as suggested a bit further down, but how's about also incorporating a large-scale version of the party blower that uncurls with a whistling noise - this would channel the explosive force harmlessly upwards (20ft?) and provide some entertainment at the same time./yeah, it's Friday!
Has anyone else just got the email from Microsoft regarding a critical security update that should be downloaded and installed immediately from windowsupdate.micros0ft.ru?
Yes, but it's interesting - I could repeat this with my Acer Aspire One netbook running fedora 13 and a Wyse 120 terminal then I could use it to...er...um...well...maybe...
Ah yes, we had one on a VAX 11/750 - great fun ensued one night when a faulty serial node on our coax network (something well obsolete called infaplugs) started to echo the login prompt, which was accepted by the 11/750 as the password - which resulted in the infaplug echoing that back etc. etc. and after a few duff logins the DECwriter started to print out intruder detection messages - it got through a whole box of listing paper overnight.
My ADM-3a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A) mumbles 'get off my lawn' in the general direction of your VT100.
We had them hooked up to Intel Development systems, Gould SEL mainframes and some box or other than ran CP/M.
The VT100s (and Wyse 120s) came later with the Vax 11/750.
Funnily enough, a recycling company picked up some old WY120s from us a couple of weeks ago after we'd brought one of our veterinary clinics into the 21st Century and off an old THEOS multi-user system.
I used to work on visuals systems for flight sims and it was common practice for the image database devs to leave each other comments something like 10m below the start of an airport's primary runway.
One day we had a sim on test with the customer and during some out-of-normal-range testing, the pilot nose-dived the plane into the primary runway only to see something like 'fuck off Joe' displayed across the entire width of the cockpit view, several feet high.
This was hastily followed by a memo to all engineers about comment etiquette. Fortunately, the pilot had a sense of humour.
"Further to our previous announcement that we have identified, and will fix, a bug in our signal strength calculation routine, we have been asked to clarify the nature of the fix:
Put simply, our calculation involves a time-related sampling and averaging of signal strength based on the distance between the iPhone and the nearest cell base station. Because radio waves travel at the speed of light, our signal strength algorithm includes this value in its calculations. At a top-level meeting today, Mr Steve Jobs decided that the best way to factor in an adjustment into our signal strength calculation is to change the definition of the speed of light by reducing it by 14% with immediate effect; not only will this allow the signal strength algorithm to work with slower sampling periods (and thus be more accurate), but it will also have the effect of making all movement (eg: public transport) effectively closer to the speed of light, thus journeys will appear faster and the time taken to get home from work will be shorter.
A slight drawback will be that from today, all observations of distance based on the time taken for light to travel between two points are now wrong and this will mean that all current human knowledge of the universe and its scale will need to be 'fixed'. Mr Jobs will be writing to all National Governments and major scientific bodies in the morning to advise them to correct their now inaccurate data.
Mr Jobs acknowledges that this move will also mean that all current and past scientific, astronomic and geographic textbooks and scientific calculators will now need to be replaced and as a gesture of goodwill, the first 50 applicants will be entitled to a 10% reduction on the cost of the revised e-book copies when they download them to their iPad. In addition, a special, limited edition iPhone4 bumper, printed with the new constant: 'c = 257821513 m/s' " will be available in the Apple stores from Monday, priced at $39.99
So far so good with them - I bought a couple before hand and we tried them for a while to see how they fared - I was mostly concerned with ventilation in such a small case but they seem to be coping well.
More likely someone's in a 'comfort zone' in purchasing?
I specced the kit for a 120-machine roll-out and it was HP or Acer for the servers and Acer Small form factors (about the size of a Wii) for the desktops, but the software vendor 'persuaded' the Directors (despite my best efforts) that they could offer a 'complete solution' using Dell - a brand that I would not touch with a bargepole except for their rackmount server range.
The machines were mostly for veterinary consulting rooms and the reception desks, where space is at a premium, so the Acer's would have been perfect, but we ended up with Vostros (ugh) that are about 4x the size and come with monitors with no inbuilt speakers - which is just dandy because a lot of veterinary courses include an online multimedia component so we have had to supply external speakers.
We did kit out the first few small clinics with Acers (about 10 units) because I had already committed to the first batch and we have had one issue with a duff (external) power supply that was quickly swapped out.
So far, we have had two Dell's needing new hard disks and one has a broken DVD drive tray (it came out, make a loud clicking noise and something snapped) - and the kit is all approx 6 months old.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Time to get shares in companies that make screen cleaning and protection products
2) Anne Boleyn is disappointed.
How do you run 'uptime' on the planet? I presume Earth is running Linux at its core?
Oh, here's a thought, maybe god installed Windows and the planet needs regular rebooting to keep it stable?
When Summer turns to Autumn, the leaves start falling and the evening nights start to have a little nip in the air, hey presto, a few well-placed sneezes up your arms and your short-sleeved top becomes full-length in the arm department.
Instead of DKNY, show a little biological chic with your NY3 wardrobe.
ASDA have a pocket-sized DAB radio for £32 that's just larger than a small box of matches. It's very plasticky but it works fine, provided the signal's good enough.
Mind you, it eats batteries and so I have just ordered some 1300mAh AAA rechargeables for it.
There IS a case for what DAB gives you - more radio stations - but that is not a thing specific to DAB. The real problems with the roll-out of DAB stack up as follows:
1) DAB was promoted as being superior to FM in terms of quality, but then the broadcasters started to tinker with bitrates on order to squeeze as many stations into the available bandwidth, even transmitting some music stations in mono, so that the quality was clearly inferior to FM. This has created a big credibility issue for DAB because the quality angle is still pushed towards an audience that has evidence to the contrary.
2) DAB reception is patchy in many areas, especially indoors. This may be mitigated when (if?) analogue is switched off and DAB transmissions get more power, but at the moment, for example, I can only receive about 50% of the available stations on my DAB kitchen radio - and if the weather is bad the error rate rockets so all I get is a burble.
3) DAB reception on public transport, especially trains, is crap. Well-paid city commuters would snap up a decent, working gadget but only AM and FM work well on the move.
4) The original DAB radios were expensive and also butt-ugly, looking like 'Practical Wireless' projects from the 70s. Many were also mono, with only one speaker - you paid extra for an add-on. These wooden-boxed radios appealed to early adopters and the curious, but the general public were not so enthusiastic. Recent designs are more sensible.
5) Portable DAB sets - especially the shirt-pocket sized ones - really really eat batteries. I'm lucky to get 4-6 hours out of a pair of good quality alkaline AAA cells. In fact, I have just ordered some 1300mAh AAA rechargeables because the cost to feed the radio with normal cells is stupid - you could easily spend more on cells in 3 weeks than the cost of the radio.
6) Getting a DAB radio for a car at a sensible price is pretty much impossible - and those who have them don't seem to be impressed with the reception and performance.
7) The technical spec for DAB is out of date already, but to replace it would mean admitting that the original design was not well thought out AND would force all current adopters to scrap their current kit; and no-one wants to be the one to announce that.
8) Many people take their own music with them and can pick and choose what they want to listen to. Why swap this for something that sounds worse and doesn't play what you want?
9) The number of mobile phones with DAB receivers is (I believe) 1 - and it's only available on one mobile network (Virgin). Having a mobile phone with DAB would give the service a *bit* of credibility, but would probably screw up battery life.
10) Here's the kicker: FM and AM 'just work' and very few have problems with the quality - there is no public tidal wave of protest demanding anything better and this leads to a sense that DAB is being pushed onto the public - which instantly gets people pissed off.
The current way forward for the broadcasters and politicians seems to be a defensive 'do nothing' while half-heartedly championing DAB, and no doubt there will be some form of mad scramble to do something half-assed when the analogue switch-off dates are imminent. There is an analogue trade-in promotion at the moment and it will be interesting to see what the take-up is.
Very recently, a Government source stated that the FM switch off would only happen when there was little demand for the service - which is a change from the previous 'rock solid' fixed date, but unless there is some serious push to improve DAB reception and produce a portable set with a sensible battery life, I fear we are going to bump along the 'do nothing' road for a long time.
There's no place like Hormel
There may be some merit in a hinge, as suggested a bit further down, but how's about also incorporating a large-scale version of the party blower that uncurls with a whistling noise - this would channel the explosive force harmlessly upwards (20ft?) and provide some entertainment at the same time. /yeah, it's Friday!
They should just put them on bungee cords so they shoot into the air and then slam back down in place.
Has anyone else just got the email from Microsoft regarding a critical security update that should be downloaded and installed immediately from windowsupdate.micros0ft.ru?
Yes, but it's interesting - I could repeat this with my Acer Aspire One netbook running fedora 13 and a Wyse 120 terminal then I could use it to ...er...um...well...maybe...
Ah yes, we had one on a VAX 11/750 - great fun ensued one night when a faulty serial node on our coax network (something well obsolete called infaplugs) started to echo the login prompt, which was accepted by the 11/750 as the password - which resulted in the infaplug echoing that back etc. etc. and after a few duff logins the DECwriter started to print out intruder detection messages - it got through a whole box of listing paper overnight.
Meh,
My ADM-3a (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A) mumbles 'get off my lawn' in the general direction of your VT100.
We had them hooked up to Intel Development systems, Gould SEL mainframes and some box or other than ran CP/M.
The VT100s (and Wyse 120s) came later with the Vax 11/750.
Funnily enough, a recycling company picked up some old WY120s from us a couple of weeks ago after we'd brought one of our veterinary clinics into the 21st Century and off an old THEOS multi-user system.
I used to work on visuals systems for flight sims and it was common practice for the image database devs to leave each other comments something like 10m below the start of an airport's primary runway.
One day we had a sim on test with the customer and during some out-of-normal-range testing, the pilot nose-dived the plane into the primary runway only to see something like 'fuck off Joe' displayed across the entire width of the cockpit view, several feet high.
This was hastily followed by a memo to all engineers about comment etiquette. Fortunately, the pilot had a sense of humour.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Further to our previous announcement that we have identified, and will fix, a bug in our signal strength calculation routine, we have been asked to clarify the nature of the fix:
Put simply, our calculation involves a time-related sampling and averaging of signal strength based on the distance between the iPhone and the nearest cell base station. Because radio waves travel at the speed of light, our signal strength algorithm includes this value in its calculations. At a top-level meeting today, Mr Steve Jobs decided that the best way to factor in an adjustment into our signal strength calculation is to change the definition of the speed of light by reducing it by 14% with immediate effect; not only will this allow the signal strength algorithm to work with slower sampling periods (and thus be more accurate), but it will also have the effect of making all movement (eg: public transport) effectively closer to the speed of light, thus journeys will appear faster and the time taken to get home from work will be shorter.
A slight drawback will be that from today, all observations of distance based on the time taken for light to travel between two points are now wrong and this will mean that all current human knowledge of the universe and its scale will need to be 'fixed'. Mr Jobs will be writing to all National Governments and major scientific bodies in the morning to advise them to correct their now inaccurate data.
Mr Jobs acknowledges that this move will also mean that all current and past scientific, astronomic and geographic textbooks and scientific calculators will now need to be replaced and as a gesture of goodwill, the first 50 applicants will be entitled to a 10% reduction on the cost of the revised e-book copies when they download them to their iPad. In addition, a special, limited edition iPhone4 bumper, printed with the new constant: 'c = 257821513 m/s' " will be available in the Apple stores from Monday, priced at $39.99
So far so good with them - I bought a couple before hand and we tried them for a while to see how they fared - I was mostly concerned with ventilation in such a small case but they seem to be coping well.
"Just recently we ordered about 10 more E6500s"
Dude, are you a masochist?
More likely someone's in a 'comfort zone' in purchasing?
I specced the kit for a 120-machine roll-out and it was HP or Acer for the servers and Acer Small form factors (about the size of a Wii) for the desktops, but the software vendor 'persuaded' the Directors (despite my best efforts) that they could offer a 'complete solution' using Dell - a brand that I would not touch with a bargepole except for their rackmount server range.
The machines were mostly for veterinary consulting rooms and the reception desks, where space is at a premium, so the Acer's would have been perfect, but we ended up with Vostros (ugh) that are about 4x the size and come with monitors with no inbuilt speakers - which is just dandy because a lot of veterinary courses include an online multimedia component so we have had to supply external speakers.
We did kit out the first few small clinics with Acers (about 10 units) because I had already committed to the first batch and we have had one issue with a duff (external) power supply that was quickly swapped out.
So far, we have had two Dell's needing new hard disks and one has a broken DVD drive tray (it came out, make a loud clicking noise and something snapped) - and the kit is all approx 6 months old.
I'm Jesux and so is my CentOS
Maybe he doesn't want to rent a PC-based sex robot?
Ok, so what did you find? Any useful lessons for us?
They are obviously resting one of their palms on the left front edge of the keyboard and hosing their signal. Did they not see the memo?
I'm waiting for the Higgs Bacon.
Because the official Apple rubber bumper that fits around the phone is allegedly $25, that's why.
Like this: http://www.kijoma.net/tiki-view_articles.php
+X insightful, surely?
International In-space Station