The only reason I have for even thinking about replacing ny dell netbook is the irritatingly low 600 vertical pixels. If I blow getting on for 900 quid on an ultrabook I will get... 768? What is the point?
re:Since when were thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) digital devices?
Since W,H. Eccles, F.W. Jordan, "Improvements in ionic relays" British patent number: GB 148582 (June 1918)?
or O. E. Schmitt [Jour. Sci. Instr., 15, 24-26 (1938)] ?
Both transistors & themionic valves are linear devices that at the extremety of the load lines exhibit switch-like voltsdrop & pass currrent values. By saturating them hard you can defone two discrete states with a rapid transition between them.
In the late 60s ITT built a marine HF transmitter with 'solid state valves' or 'vacuumless tubes' depending which side of the pond you were from. I never did find out what was inside. They still had heaters & similar anode voltages. The package was ceramic wit a BFO heatsink on the top.
Whatever method you choose, presumably the optimal altitude is where the baloon runs out of lift, at which point the rate of climb will be tending to zero.
Such a system would overcome the downrange problem with the spherical methods - downrange speed would be roughly constant, so rate of change would be zero (for all practical solutions - if the slant range was > 45 degrees it would be wrong, but I am guessing the slant range will be no more than 2 degrees off zenith).
Before GPS we used to use a whole variety of hyperbolic positioning systems. One that ought to work well here is a range-range or pinground system. Have the platform send a radio ping to a repeater on the ground and wait for the (frequency offset) return. the round trip time will define a sphere around the ground station, and hence be a good approximation to altitude. I am sure baloons go more up than sideways.
Back it up with the baloon straingauge and a timer, mind.
After I diagnosed it myself - they made no sensible suggestions- I got the following from one Sarah Martin:
Dear Robert
Thank you for your email.
"The Met Office uses Webtrends Analytics to understand how people are using the website and identify areas that can be improved or removed."
This is covered in our cookie policy page: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/help/cookies#third-partyy
I hope this helps.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Met Office Customer Feedback
I now use Meteox and Weather Underground which work even when their many trackers are blocked. If you want a blobby forecast instead of doing it youself Weather Online" seem just as good as the met orifice.
You will have to turn off ghostery for the new version of the Met office web site. Their new version introduced a few weeks ago won't work unless you are being tracked. The old one was fine
In 'every other article' I have suggested that in this day and age we should be seeing a Miniumum of 1200 vertical pixels, and would expect more than 1500. I had CRT monitors with 1600 vertical pixels at the turn of the century, and >1200 vertical pixels in a 2004 dell laptop.
I really don't think that 1080 is anywhere near enough. On the 15 inch screen that works out at around 147dpi, fractionally less than a Motorola Zoom tablet. The Disgo 8100 tablet, manages 117 and that only costs 99 quid. The Galaxy S3 phone is 306dpi.
I was loyal to Sony for Analogue electronics: clever, straightforward, mini hi-fi, Trinitron CRT tvs, a car radio/cassette player. All solid, reliable, high quality sound (& picture). Then came the first Sony Tv with teletext/viewdata/whatever it was called that week. I had to have 4 before I got one that worked. They argued all the time that there was nothing wrong.
Then the removal men dropped a 1 year old telly. It was 4 years before the insurers returned it, because of problems with Sony supplying parts.
I'd stopped believing in them long before the rootkit fiasco, although that was when I stopped buying anything, already annoyed by a lock-in policy that covered cameras, audio players, etc.
They made their name with good quality affordable well supported products, Once they had the name they dropped the other 3 things. And I dropped them.
I would have already bought one of your ultratoys to replace my nasty Dell mini with its 600 vertical pixels, were it not for the fact that you hobble your customer's designs to something like 768 vertical pixels.
This is 2012, and I expect something better than the Hercules adaptor I had in my IBM-AT in 1985.
If your ultraslab has a screen resolution of 3000-odd by 1500-odd, I shall beat a path to the first person who tries to sell me one.
Oh, and yes. Mending is right. Some modern connectivity, and how about /built in/ wireless for an external optical disk, using some scheme that leaves the wifi and the bluetooth free. Ability to take phone calls. SD memory card slots (plural, note).
But most of all get us away from these miserable tv-based video standards to something more appropriate for computing.
Yours sincerely
someone who is going to pay for what I want, not what you want me to want.
This may displace the claims of the Power over Ethernet people that their socket is the only 'power outlet' which is the same in every country on earth.
"awesome" is a funny way of describing something worse than I had in 2004. Should be twice that by now, and 768 on the 700 quid one is a hell of an insult
but why wait until now? I'm using an 8 year old Draenetz power analyser with a touch screen. Did he sue them 8 years ago? or the Estate Agents who 15 years ago had touch sensitive overlays on shop windows with a 'puter screen indoors to let you browse the houses available?
If I was to award him damages I would want him to show he has taken every step to protect his patent ever since it was granted, not wait for a fine crop of cherries to pick.
It just means that the next someone who wants to use it will have, to buy the lads out of the apple agreement. Have to keep the lawyers busy you know, otherwise they will start working on the rest of us.
I've twice had to lay off my entire staff, and always told them face to face, even when it meant driving round the country at my own expense to do so.
In one job it was obvious we were being shut down, and the boss asked me how to do it. I replied "Whenever I have had to write a list of names I have always put my own at the top", explaining that you need to be able to look people in the face when sending them home. "Jah" he said, "Dat is gud advice". He went and wrote a list and put my name at the top.
There is a tiny little mobile phone shop in our tiny little town where I can by a USB cable for under 2quid on a sunday or a microSD card for online prices.
We have a 2-man computer shop that repairs old base stations and will sell you a hard disk for the same price as amazon if challenged. You want a 700 quid i7 with a terrabyte disk and stupid amount of ram? be ready for you tomorrow morning sir. and, no, you don't have to have it with Windows.
They had 70 quid android tablets in the window 2 years ago.
There is a little local hi-fi shop in Stamford that is run by a handful of blokes who know exactly what they are talking about. They will show you all sorts of entertainment stuff working together in the shop, deliver it to yer house and connect it all up - including taking a brick cutter to the wall, burying the cables, and skimming and painting the wall afterwards.
If something doesn't work, they make it work. If a customer says "it doesn't work" their first assumption is that the customer is right, not an idiot. If something stops working they are usually there within the hour, and will only charge you for new parts, not their time.
They sold the first Plasma TV I ever saw, routinely install DLNA systems, and will sell you a linux micropowered server instead of leaving a PC on all day. Their first love is hifi, not 7.1, and certainly not oxygen-free cables with arrows on the side. Go in for a DAB radio and they will try to persuade you to stick to FM unless it is clear there are stations you know you want.
They have been in business more than 30 years and I expect them to be there in 30 years time.
Curry and Dixon both moved out of the high street in recent years. There is one of the megashedds on a nearby estate, but I don't know which one as I have never been in it, and judging by the car park no-one else has either. When we had the snow that end stayed unsullied till the thaw.
Register
1837 posts • joined Sunday 8th October 2006 16:17 GMT
Page:
letterbox screens?
The only reason I have for even thinking about replacing ny dell netbook is the irritatingly low 600 vertical pixels. If I blow getting on for 900 quid on an ultrabook I will get... 768? What is the point?
Re: What adverts?
I am happy to use adblock and ghostery to cut back their hedonism a bit
re:Since when were thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) digital devices?
Since W,H. Eccles, F.W. Jordan, "Improvements in ionic relays" British patent number: GB 148582 (June 1918)?
or O. E. Schmitt [Jour. Sci. Instr., 15, 24-26 (1938)] ?
Both transistors & themionic valves are linear devices that at the extremety of the load lines exhibit switch-like voltsdrop & pass currrent values. By saturating them hard you can defone two discrete states with a rapid transition between them.
Seems just as digital as a transistor to me.
Re: somewhat older in fact
In the late 60s ITT built a marine HF transmitter with 'solid state valves' or 'vacuumless tubes' depending which side of the pond you were from. I never did find out what was inside. They still had heaters & similar anode voltages. The package was ceramic wit a BFO heatsink on the top.
oh?
we measure power in volts now?
allegedly
It’s quantum computing: of course there’s a paradox
Best subhead of the year!
rate of change
Whatever method you choose, presumably the optimal altitude is where the baloon runs out of lift, at which point the rate of climb will be tending to zero.
Such a system would overcome the downrange problem with the spherical methods - downrange speed would be roughly constant, so rate of change would be zero (for all practical solutions - if the slant range was > 45 degrees it would be wrong, but I am guessing the slant range will be no more than 2 degrees off zenith).
Range-range timing
Before GPS we used to use a whole variety of hyperbolic positioning systems. One that ought to work well here is a range-range or pinground system. Have the platform send a radio ping to a repeater on the ground and wait for the (frequency offset) return. the round trip time will define a sphere around the ground station, and hence be a good approximation to altitude. I am sure baloons go more up than sideways.
Back it up with the baloon straingauge and a timer, mind.
Re: Met Office website
After I diagnosed it myself - they made no sensible suggestions- I got the following from one Sarah Martin:
Dear Robert
Thank you for your email.
"The Met Office uses Webtrends Analytics to understand how people are using the website and identify areas that can be improved or removed."
This is covered in our cookie policy page: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/help/cookies#third-partyy
I hope this helps.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Met Office Customer Feedback
I now use Meteox and Weather Underground which work even when their many trackers are blocked. If you want a blobby forecast instead of doing it youself Weather Online" seem just as good as the met orifice.
Aye
Pot, meet kettle
must get round to blocking GA
Ghostery + adblock plus.
You will have to turn off ghostery for the new version of the Met office web site. Their new version introduced a few weeks ago won't work unless you are being tracked. The old one was fine
But viewing figures down
I'll tell you why.
Because the content is crap, that's why
@Alan Edwards
>Proper monitors aren't much better. 27-inch, but only 1920x1080??
It's a major piss-take in my opinion. The Iiyama HM703U crt was 1600x1200 and 17" in 1999.
@dogged
In 'every other article' I have suggested that in this day and age we should be seeing a Miniumum of 1200 vertical pixels, and would expect more than 1500. I had CRT monitors with 1600 vertical pixels at the turn of the century, and >1200 vertical pixels in a 2004 dell laptop.
I really don't think that 1080 is anywhere near enough. On the 15 inch screen that works out at around 147dpi, fractionally less than a Motorola Zoom tablet. The Disgo 8100 tablet, manages 117 and that only costs 99 quid. The Galaxy S3 phone is 306dpi.
Yawn
1920 x 1080 should be baseline. It is not 'impressive' in any known language.
What is the point?
The bluddy box shifters will only fit toys-r-us screens. Why do they need stonking great graphics ships?
can't say 'hoover'
No, but in this context I don't think they'd want to 'suck' them up either.
@unexpected Bill
Yes.
I was loyal to Sony for Analogue electronics: clever, straightforward, mini hi-fi, Trinitron CRT tvs, a car radio/cassette player. All solid, reliable, high quality sound (& picture). Then came the first Sony Tv with teletext/viewdata/whatever it was called that week. I had to have 4 before I got one that worked. They argued all the time that there was nothing wrong.
Then the removal men dropped a 1 year old telly. It was 4 years before the insurers returned it, because of problems with Sony supplying parts.
I'd stopped believing in them long before the rootkit fiasco, although that was when I stopped buying anything, already annoyed by a lock-in policy that covered cameras, audio players, etc.
They made their name with good quality affordable well supported products, Once they had the name they dropped the other 3 things. And I dropped them.
How about a car-boat-rocket-plane
Superthunderstingcar! is go!
Ah, yes.
Welcome back, Simon, it's been too long
Re: Open Letter
Dear Mr Intel
Oh really?
Tell you what, you want to call it "ultra" anything, I suggest you up the MINIMUM specs to something with more, well, 'Ultra' in it.
Robert Harvey
Open Letter
Dear Mr Intel
I would have already bought one of your ultratoys to replace my nasty Dell mini with its 600 vertical pixels, were it not for the fact that you hobble your customer's designs to something like 768 vertical pixels.
This is 2012, and I expect something better than the Hercules adaptor I had in my IBM-AT in 1985.
If your ultraslab has a screen resolution of 3000-odd by 1500-odd, I shall beat a path to the first person who tries to sell me one.
Oh, and yes. Mending is right. Some modern connectivity, and how about /built in/ wireless for an external optical disk, using some scheme that leaves the wifi and the bluetooth free. Ability to take phone calls. SD memory card slots (plural, note).
But most of all get us away from these miserable tv-based video standards to something more appropriate for computing.
Yours sincerely
someone who is going to pay for what I want, not what you want me to want.
@illiad
But buying the phone won't mean you don't need a house any more, surely? It's not an alternative, it's an extra.
Re: Back of the envelope
>Do these vehicles allow for the dissipation of 10kW of heat
Toast 12 slices of bread in one go?
Up for that!
@Lost all Faith
Oh Aye.
Back to PoE then.
IT angle
This may displace the claims of the Power over Ethernet people that their socket is the only 'power outlet' which is the same in every country on earth.
vertical res looks awesome
"awesome" is a funny way of describing something worse than I had in 2004. Should be twice that by now, and 768 on the 700 quid one is a hell of an insult
Public sector
So, they overspend by 100%.
Who got the sack?
"The demand is there for Windows Phone"
Where?
Re: Whats the point?
>at least those in charge will have fewer plausible excuses when they get it wrong.
They won't care. They have no shame.
Fail
1366 x 768.
Re: Lets keep this in perspective
>I don't know ANYONE with a Windows Phone, not personally, or in the tech sector,
> it's become a laughing stock.
And yet, tiles have been such a magnificent success that the flagship desktop product is adopting them.
Hmm.
Fail, MS, fail.
Linux
Time for the penguin.
...not enough sockets...
Oh well
At least it can't be described as a cock-up.
Oh. So you need a bigger one of it to check it?
Research funds, lads!
rationally engaging in discussion?
Ah. Right. OK then.
Is that /every/ day?
Easy
Australia worked out OK.
How about being the labour force for Asteroid Mining?
Re: Apple bitten.
but why wait until now? I'm using an 8 year old Draenetz power analyser with a touch screen. Did he sue them 8 years ago? or the Estate Agents who 15 years ago had touch sensitive overlays on shop windows with a 'puter screen indoors to let you browse the houses available?
If I was to award him damages I would want him to show he has taken every step to protect his patent ever since it was granted, not wait for a fine crop of cherries to pick.
Re: Liquid Metal
how do you know he was the last one?
Re: 11 Million
Nah.
It just means that the next someone who wants to use it will have, to buy the lads out of the apple agreement. Have to keep the lawyers busy you know, otherwise they will start working on the rest of us.
Re: Face to face
I've twice had to lay off my entire staff, and always told them face to face, even when it meant driving round the country at my own expense to do so.
In one job it was obvious we were being shut down, and the boss asked me how to do it. I replied "Whenever I have had to write a list of names I have always put my own at the top", explaining that you need to be able to look people in the face when sending them home. "Jah" he said, "Dat is gud advice". He went and wrote a list and put my name at the top.
Info please
So how do these compare with using a tablet?
ipud pricing, I reckon
Re: Game over already
I cannot praise Campkins or University Cameras in Cambridge enough.
Tom Dennis or London Camera Exchange in Lincoln too.
You need somewhere like that.
The other way
Ah yes.
Sensible prices, up-to-date stock, honest and knowledgeable staff and good customer service.
Do you think it might catch on?
Re: Tesco ? No thanks
Trading standards. Sale of goods act. Directive 1999/44/EC. Woof.
If they still weasel, local newspapers, facebook, twitter. There is no excuse for this sort of bollocks.
If they still carry on, they will go the same way as Dixons, and no greater loss either.
Re: A shame in one sense
There is a tiny little mobile phone shop in our tiny little town where I can by a USB cable for under 2quid on a sunday or a microSD card for online prices.
We have a 2-man computer shop that repairs old base stations and will sell you a hard disk for the same price as amazon if challenged. You want a 700 quid i7 with a terrabyte disk and stupid amount of ram? be ready for you tomorrow morning sir. and, no, you don't have to have it with Windows.
They had 70 quid android tablets in the window 2 years ago.
Re: @Alan Firminger: There's truth in both camps
There is a little local hi-fi shop in Stamford that is run by a handful of blokes who know exactly what they are talking about. They will show you all sorts of entertainment stuff working together in the shop, deliver it to yer house and connect it all up - including taking a brick cutter to the wall, burying the cables, and skimming and painting the wall afterwards.
If something doesn't work, they make it work. If a customer says "it doesn't work" their first assumption is that the customer is right, not an idiot. If something stops working they are usually there within the hour, and will only charge you for new parts, not their time.
They sold the first Plasma TV I ever saw, routinely install DLNA systems, and will sell you a linux micropowered server instead of leaving a PC on all day. Their first love is hifi, not 7.1, and certainly not oxygen-free cables with arrows on the side. Go in for a DAB radio and they will try to persuade you to stick to FM unless it is clear there are stations you know you want.
They have been in business more than 30 years and I expect them to be there in 30 years time.
Curry and Dixon both moved out of the high street in recent years. There is one of the megashedds on a nearby estate, but I don't know which one as I have never been in it, and judging by the car park no-one else has either. When we had the snow that end stayed unsullied till the thaw.
Page: