I don't know for sure, but the adaptor may actually be the reason. The adaptor is dumb - it has no electrical linkages to the Nikkor lens. In general practice, this is normally a limitation, as metering / aperture data can't be captured by the camera. But if one is hacking around with camera firmware, the adaptor provides safety as the lens can't be borked by accident.
So the use of a cheap but reasonable prime lens separated from the camera electronics might be a good test environment.
Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413):
"Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text.
There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract.
The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully.
Extremely disappointing."
Actually, it depends on what you define as 'work'. For certain aspects of my work (as a science writer), the iPad is a fantastic device. I can work anywhere, read academic publications with ease, and even write monthly columns. My former laptop was stolen; I replaced it with an iPad, and the productivity increase has been huge.
This is just my experience, though, and it won't hold for many professions. But don't make such sweeping generalisations unless you look at life outside your cubicle!
Hmm... I'm part of a working group to evaluate IT needs for my department (R&D of a FTSE 100 company). We're pushing for differentiation from our colleagues in marketing / HR et c., so this is a good time to figure-out how bad the boot times are. I was given an HP EliteBook 6930P with Win XP about one year ago - it hasn't been re-imaged since then, so is fairly typical of my team. It's a P8700 Core2Duo with 4Gb ram (2.9Gb addressable), 250 GB 5400 rpm HD. Support is through HP.
Obviously, the definition of end-of-boot is perhaps a little loose, so I've defined key points in start-up.
Okay - mashing the power button and starting the stop-clock. [pedants - Time quoted in (m,ss)
1,45 seconds and I'm at the RSA SecureID log in (paused the clock for a few seconds to be fair)
3,52 and it's mapping network drives.
4,15 desktop appears
3,35 AV loaded
4,55 Hit the Outlook icon
5,13 It's syncing my 'My Documents' folder
6,00 Outlook splash screen
7,30 Outlook completed start-up Exchange connected
8,05 'My Documents' sync complete
9,32 Outlook completes folder sync.
10,35 CPU usage drops below 10% for first time.
Yeah, not looking too speedy for me. And shut down is hardly rocket-speed either - another forced 'My Documents' sync later, and it's [2,55] to get to power off.
I do use hibernate a few times during the day (boot-up on the train to work, hibernate; resume in the office, hibernate at CoB; resume on the train, hibernate), but the a daily rebook cycle is required or WiFi adaptor starts dying.
So yeah - it's a bag of crap.
I hate to agree with this (as a cheaper-than-a-robot-scientist within pharma), but it's probably true. GSK have had a load of bad press in the UK over the last few years, mostly due to enormous lay-offs and site closures, so a bit of good PR is appealing.
However, their competitors could have done likewise with malaria or other programmes and didn't - they'd rather sit on the (fairly useless) data, so I'm actually fairly impressed.
The interesting bit is to follow, though; if a university or NFP institute find something useful, will GSK assist in any way?
Speaking from the inside of a large pharma company, I can tell you that there is currently *a lot* of interest in Dengue. Several of the biggest drug-companies are beginning programmes aimed at Dengue, and funding bodies are proposing collaborative efforts. It's a (very) long way from a viable treatment, but the people at the top can see the money now... which helps.
A good, and fairly impartial summary is here. A more detailed guide (PDF) is here. However, perhaps the most salient stat is: "Only 5 in 5,000 compounds that enter the preclinical testing phase actually make it to human testing. One of these five drugs tested in people is approved."
As for trials, a good break-down of costs is found here. I work in pharma as a scientific researcher, and I find the costs terrifying - especially as my salary appears to be the only thing smaller than six-figures...
Seriously, $60m isn't anywhere near enough to bring this to market. Most studies in pharma show that $1000m is far closer to the real figure these days, with some pushing that towards $1700m. Of course, this is an average figure, and the costs of drug development are highest towards the end (phase IIb, phase III). Any drug targeting the CNS is going to be expensive in trials, and with the condition apparently 'rare' (an ill-defined term), finding suitable patients willing to undergo the treatment in trials might be difficult.
More realistically, $60m might get them to the point where a Big-Pharma will either buy the company or the drug.
It's a question of mapping: the goal isn't to take an APPLE to start with then compare it to the price of a similar PC; instead, it's to take a PC you want, and asking if there EVEN IS a similar Mac -- in a lot of cases, there just won't be.
That's a damned good point, and the main reason that I'm typing this reply on a [somewhere between eight years, or one month old - depending on how one measures it] custom box. By most measures, it would be described as mid-range, and I'd love to own a mid-range mac. Except, not stuffed into the back on my monitor, because it's nice to be able to improved the video card every-so-often. Or disconnect the 'display size' from from other performance metrics. That mid-range mac has been missing-in-action for a long, long time, and I don't get it...
Yeah, and just how many windows users know that? This is going to cause *so many* problems - especially when idiots try to hide their browsing history by killing the browser. I'm looking forward to this one...
That's all very well if you have the choice - like it or not, some people *have* to use Vista. I pity them, but the poor b@$tards don't need any more difficulties like this!
Durrr... thats a lame comparison. When "upgrading" from a twenty year old mazda, you don't suddenly find that your new car has only one pedal, and that you have to haul on the hand-brake and then pump that pedal to slow down. Or that the manufacturer has decided to rearrange all the switches, and put the radio in the boot. On the other hand, had WinXP been a car, not only would thousands have died in fatal accidents, and over 80% been stolen, the top-brass in MS would be in prison for corporate neglegence. My mum only needs her computer for the internet and email. It's a PIII 850, with 256mb RAM et c. Rubbish, in otherwords. But why upgrade? Her camera works great with it, as does the ADSL and the printer. Why does she need anything else? However, her Rover 218 had done 145k, wouldn't start in the rain and the turbo whistle ran to 140dB. Yep, that needed an upgrade.
PTerry (see ) also has the ignominy of being the UK's most shop-lifted author. I'm sure that's worth of an honour - a medal or trophy or summat - but it'll have been stolen too.
TWFM is an easier pitch than most of pratchett's other work. It's stand-alone, but still introduces elements of the discworld to the public, and was a popular book oustide of it's fandom audience. Hopefully, it'll be treated with enough respect, and Terry will be able to veto any plot alteration.
A decent performance at the box office will increase the chances of one of the 'mainstream' novels being filmed, so perhaps we'll see Guards! Guards! in the cinema before long!
NMR is great, because it's fast, relatively easy to run, and tolerant of substrate. But it isn't absolutely accurate. Techniques such as nOesy and cosey allow for determination of stereochemistry via two-dimensionaly NMR, showing contact through bonding and through-space interactions. However the data from a nOe experiment can be inconclusive, especially in cyclic systems. Only X-ray data can actually confirm the true structure then. A friend, also doing a Ph. D in chemistry, has just binned half his thesis because the NMR data lead to one conclusion, only to be contradicted by the X-ray data. And this wasn't a small difference either... Oh well, back to the lab then...
First off, lets not argue about semantics. I said the fuel was cheap, because, yes, the tax is lower. I'm not trying to say that the actual pet-ether is cheaper in the states, cause it hardly varies in the western world. For comparison, a quick calculation says that UK unleaded is costing me about $7 per gallon. Not cheap, and yes, all tax. Boo, and indeed, hiss.
My car produces around 230 ft/lb in standard spec, but as I've said in another reply, it's easily modified to about 265 ft/lb using a more modern engine management unit. Further more, my car weighs about 1400kgs, compared to the Mustangs 1600kgs, so the difference isn't massive. I don't know about saftey specs for US cars, but it's got the usual complement of airbags, crumple zones, ABS, power-steering et c. Oh, and the noise a V5 engine makes is nearly musical:)
Yep, the government (state or national) would be stupid to increase tax on fuel. That's like suggesting that, "actually, Saddam's a pretty decent bloke" with regard to election polls. So the only thing to push up prices is the fuel production cost. But by the time it starts _really climbing_, it's too late...
Yeah, that's if you leave it as standard spec. Swap out the engine management chip for a more modern one, and you get my figures. This is an extremely popular modification, and brings a older car (mine is a 97R) up to date. And, belive me, turbo-lag isn't an issue. 0-60 is around 5.5sec just now...
You don't even need to get a particularly exotic manufacturer. Ford sells loads of great efficient cars in Europe, but not in the US. For example, the Fiesta and Ka: http://www.ford.co.uk/ns7/all_cars/-/-
But there's no market for them. Too small, apparently...
An interesting trend is that fuel economies tend to be set by the price of the fuel. In other words, car manufacturers only put the effort into improving efficiency when they need to, and that's when people won't take any more. US readers might not believe me on this one, but their fuel is cheap, at least when compared to European prices. And thus, lumbering goliaths (aka SUVs) are still a reasonable proposition. It astounds me when I look at the performance/economy figures for American cars. An example is the new Ford Mustang (a tasty looking car, BTW). The 4L model gets around 200bhp, and about 19/28mpg. My Fiat Coupe is comparible, but gets 260bhp from a 2L engine, and more than 50mpg outside town (I don't live in a city). Hybrids are only there to keep the PR good. Whats needed is a fundamental modernisation of US cars.
Slashdot Mirror
So ask for your money back. Oh, that right...
I don't know for sure, but the adaptor may actually be the reason. The adaptor is dumb - it has no electrical linkages to the Nikkor lens. In general practice, this is normally a limitation, as metering / aperture data can't be captured by the camera. But if one is hacking around with camera firmware, the adaptor provides safety as the lens can't be borked by accident. So the use of a cheap but reasonable prime lens separated from the camera electronics might be a good test environment.
...evar.
Damn right. I just gave them some feedback (which you can too at http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=878133413): "Why does the new site use so little screen space? On a fairly standard monitor, less than half of my screen space is being used by content. The yellow/black theme is fine, but throwing blue into the mix is horrible! The shade of blue chosen is also almost identical to that used in Windows 7 to highlighted text. There is also very little commonality in CSS - why are some section headings backed with a yellow banner, but other are not? Randomly scattered white boxes along with the yellow banner spreading out along the screen for no reason also distract. The whole design feels very rushed and unfinished, and not up to the usual BBC standards. The new BBC Food ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/ ) and Weather ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ ) pages (in particular) have been refreshed much more successfully. Extremely disappointing."
Actually, it depends on what you define as 'work'. For certain aspects of my work (as a science writer), the iPad is a fantastic device. I can work anywhere, read academic publications with ease, and even write monthly columns. My former laptop was stolen; I replaced it with an iPad, and the productivity increase has been huge. This is just my experience, though, and it won't hold for many professions. But don't make such sweeping generalisations unless you look at life outside your cubicle!
Hmm... I'm part of a working group to evaluate IT needs for my department (R&D of a FTSE 100 company). We're pushing for differentiation from our colleagues in marketing / HR et c., so this is a good time to figure-out how bad the boot times are. I was given an HP EliteBook 6930P with Win XP about one year ago - it hasn't been re-imaged since then, so is fairly typical of my team. It's a P8700 Core2Duo with 4Gb ram (2.9Gb addressable), 250 GB 5400 rpm HD. Support is through HP. Obviously, the definition of end-of-boot is perhaps a little loose, so I've defined key points in start-up. Okay - mashing the power button and starting the stop-clock. [pedants - Time quoted in (m,ss)
1,45 seconds and I'm at the RSA SecureID log in (paused the clock for a few seconds to be fair)
3,52 and it's mapping network drives.
4,15 desktop appears
3,35 AV loaded
4,55 Hit the Outlook icon
5,13 It's syncing my 'My Documents' folder
6,00 Outlook splash screen
7,30 Outlook completed start-up Exchange connected
8,05 'My Documents' sync complete
9,32 Outlook completes folder sync.
10,35 CPU usage drops below 10% for first time.
Yeah, not looking too speedy for me. And shut down is hardly rocket-speed either - another forced 'My Documents' sync later, and it's [2,55] to get to power off.
I do use hibernate a few times during the day (boot-up on the train to work, hibernate; resume in the office, hibernate at CoB; resume on the train, hibernate), but the a daily rebook cycle is required or WiFi adaptor starts dying.
So yeah - it's a bag of crap.
I hate to agree with this (as a cheaper-than-a-robot-scientist within pharma), but it's probably true. GSK have had a load of bad press in the UK over the last few years, mostly due to enormous lay-offs and site closures, so a bit of good PR is appealing. However, their competitors could have done likewise with malaria or other programmes and didn't - they'd rather sit on the (fairly useless) data, so I'm actually fairly impressed. The interesting bit is to follow, though; if a university or NFP institute find something useful, will GSK assist in any way?
Speaking from the inside of a large pharma company, I can tell you that there is currently *a lot* of interest in Dengue. Several of the biggest drug-companies are beginning programmes aimed at Dengue, and funding bodies are proposing collaborative efforts. It's a (very) long way from a viable treatment, but the people at the top can see the money now... which helps.
A good, and fairly impartial summary is here. A more detailed guide (PDF) is here. However, perhaps the most salient stat is: "Only 5 in 5,000 compounds that enter the preclinical testing phase actually make it to human testing. One of these five drugs tested in people is approved." As for trials, a good break-down of costs is found here. I work in pharma as a scientific researcher, and I find the costs terrifying - especially as my salary appears to be the only thing smaller than six-figures...
Seriously, $60m isn't anywhere near enough to bring this to market. Most studies in pharma show that $1000m is far closer to the real figure these days, with some pushing that towards $1700m. Of course, this is an average figure, and the costs of drug development are highest towards the end (phase IIb, phase III). Any drug targeting the CNS is going to be expensive in trials, and with the condition apparently 'rare' (an ill-defined term), finding suitable patients willing to undergo the treatment in trials might be difficult. More realistically, $60m might get them to the point where a Big-Pharma will either buy the company or the drug.
I wish I was you. Really.
It's a question of mapping: the goal isn't to take an APPLE to start with then compare it to the price of a similar PC; instead, it's to take a PC you want, and asking if there EVEN IS a similar Mac -- in a lot of cases, there just won't be.
That's a damned good point, and the main reason that I'm typing this reply on a [somewhere between eight years, or one month old - depending on how one measures it] custom box. By most measures, it would be described as mid-range, and I'd love to own a mid-range mac. Except, not stuffed into the back on my monitor, because it's nice to be able to improved the video card every-so-often. Or disconnect the 'display size' from from other performance metrics. That mid-range mac has been missing-in-action for a long, long time, and I don't get it...
Yeah, and just how many windows users know that? This is going to cause *so many* problems - especially when idiots try to hide their browsing history by killing the browser. I'm looking forward to this one...
Essentially make it like Windows 2000 used to be. Easy, simple, minimal, and out of your way.
Why not stick with win2k then? If you're happy, clap your hands and stick with it...
That's all very well if you have the choice - like it or not, some people *have* to use Vista. I pity them, but the poor b@$tards don't need any more difficulties like this!
Durrr... thats a lame comparison. When "upgrading" from a twenty year old mazda, you don't suddenly find that your new car has only one pedal, and that you have to haul on the hand-brake and then pump that pedal to slow down. Or that the manufacturer has decided to rearrange all the switches, and put the radio in the boot. On the other hand, had WinXP been a car, not only would thousands have died in fatal accidents, and over 80% been stolen, the top-brass in MS would be in prison for corporate neglegence.
My mum only needs her computer for the internet and email. It's a PIII 850, with 256mb RAM et c. Rubbish, in otherwords. But why upgrade? Her camera works great with it, as does the ADSL and the printer. Why does she need anything else? However, her Rover 218 had done 145k, wouldn't start in the rain and the turbo whistle ran to 140dB. Yep, that needed an upgrade.
err... that should have been "see http://www.lspace.org/ ". Oops.
PTerry (see ) also has the ignominy of being the UK's most shop-lifted author. I'm sure that's worth of an honour - a medal or trophy or summat - but it'll have been stolen too.
TWFM is an easier pitch than most of pratchett's other work. It's stand-alone, but still introduces elements of the discworld to the public, and was a popular book oustide of it's fandom audience. Hopefully, it'll be treated with enough respect, and Terry will be able to veto any plot alteration. A decent performance at the box office will increase the chances of one of the 'mainstream' novels being filmed, so perhaps we'll see Guards! Guards! in the cinema before long!
NMR is great, because it's fast, relatively easy to run, and tolerant of substrate. But it isn't absolutely accurate. Techniques such as nOesy and cosey allow for determination of stereochemistry via two-dimensionaly NMR, showing contact through bonding and through-space interactions. However the data from a nOe experiment can be inconclusive, especially in cyclic systems. Only X-ray data can actually confirm the true structure then.
A friend, also doing a Ph. D in chemistry, has just binned half his thesis because the NMR data lead to one conclusion, only to be contradicted by the X-ray data. And this wasn't a small difference either...
Oh well, back to the lab then...
? 97k, no problems other that a broken windscreen wiper unit, and a pair of brake hoses.
First off, lets not argue about semantics. I said the fuel was cheap, because, yes, the tax is lower. I'm not trying to say that the actual pet-ether is cheaper in the states, cause it hardly varies in the western world. For comparison, a quick calculation says that UK unleaded is costing me about $7 per gallon. Not cheap, and yes, all tax. Boo, and indeed, hiss. My car produces around 230 ft/lb in standard spec, but as I've said in another reply, it's easily modified to about 265 ft/lb using a more modern engine management unit. Further more, my car weighs about 1400kgs, compared to the Mustangs 1600kgs, so the difference isn't massive. I don't know about saftey specs for US cars, but it's got the usual complement of airbags, crumple zones, ABS, power-steering et c. Oh, and the noise a V5 engine makes is nearly musical :)
Yep, the government (state or national) would be stupid to increase tax on fuel. That's like suggesting that, "actually, Saddam's a pretty decent bloke" with regard to election polls. So the only thing to push up prices is the fuel production cost. But by the time it starts _really climbing_, it's too late...
Yeah, that's if you leave it as standard spec. Swap out the engine management chip for a more modern one, and you get my figures. This is an extremely popular modification, and brings a older car (mine is a 97R) up to date. And, belive me, turbo-lag isn't an issue. 0-60 is around 5.5sec just now...
You don't even need to get a particularly exotic manufacturer. Ford sells loads of great efficient cars in Europe, but not in the US. For example, the Fiesta and Ka: http://www.ford.co.uk/ns7/all_cars/-/- But there's no market for them. Too small, apparently...
An interesting trend is that fuel economies tend to be set by the price of the fuel. In other words, car manufacturers only put the effort into improving efficiency when they need to, and that's when people won't take any more. US readers might not believe me on this one, but their fuel is cheap, at least when compared to European prices. And thus, lumbering goliaths (aka SUVs) are still a reasonable proposition. It astounds me when I look at the performance/economy figures for American cars. An example is the new Ford Mustang (a tasty looking car, BTW). The 4L model gets around 200bhp, and about 19/28mpg. My Fiat Coupe is comparible, but gets 260bhp from a 2L engine, and more than 50mpg outside town (I don't live in a city). Hybrids are only there to keep the PR good. Whats needed is a fundamental modernisation of US cars.