Posts by Haku

Re: What about methane collection?

Aww, really?

I hate it when film science lies to us.

Screw you Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome!!

Re: internetofshit

Favourite one so far:

"lol my bank just called me

because you can give your accounts nicknames to remember which savings acct is which

and I put an emoji in one of them

and apparently somehow broke their entire banking system

so I guess... don't do that"

Re: SWATing

"No, because most of them are babysat by the TV and everyone knows in real life you can get shot 3 dozen times and get up, then still fight 300 baddies with your bare hands"

It has definitely got worse since I was a kid because back then the good & bad guys on tv would shoot at each other all day long and nobody got hit.

"If you have a problem... if no one else can help... and if you can find them... "

Re: Meanwhile....

Sampler, have you recently been watching The Fifth Element?

Multipass!

I dabbled in programming on my BBC Micro back in the 80s, mostly BASIC but did get into some of assembly for its speed, and the best book I ever owned for it was I think 'Advanced Programming For The BBC Micro' (going by memory but I do still have it in a drawer with the BBC Master Compact), which I bought for £2.49 from Toys'R'Us.

Re: Lets MASH UP!

What about The Prodigy's Outer Space and The Trap Door?

Actually I have The Flumps on DVD...

And the DVLA for double dipping on car tax...

Also I expect they'll send someone round to specifically check the place where you want your deliveries dropped is suitable for a drone landing, then marking the GPS coordinates in their delivery database if they're satisfied, because they're under the spotlight on this one and they won't leave anything to chance that they can help - people are just itching to say they fucked up and it was a stupid idea.

Personally I only care that they don't screw things up for the airborne hobbyists.

Re: My old...

I've got a Quantum Bigfoot drive in my old HDD stockpile, I wonder what sort of capacity you'd get if they made them with today's platter density.

Re: Quicktime still exists!?

@MartinB105, that's practicaly my experience of the video player too, it was atrocious to use and it really didn't make me want to buy any Apple products if they couldn't even get a simple video player working well.

I do have to deal with .MOV files these days though, because for some reason it's a preferred choice of video container for various sportcams/dashcams, but most recent video players & editors handle a huge variety of formats so it's not really an issue anymore.

Re: Many have tried...

You're right about coding being boring from a spectators point of view, so to make the film/tv show interesting they can only really use coding as a plot point.

Hackers (1995) happens to be one of my guilty pleasures films because it's pure hollywood cheese, and the soundtrack is kickin' (The Prodigy, Leftfield, Orbital, Underworld etc.). Antitrust (2001) isn't that bad, but like I just said one of the plot points is the coding but it's overshadowed by the lies, deceit, theft and murders that happen in it.

TV show wise, I'd really like to see the 1995 series Dweebs again one day, I know it's going to severely dated technological wise but I remember the jokes being spot on. jPod (2008) wasn't a bad tv series either.

Sounds like those shrink wrap contracts where you agree to a bunch of terms and conditions you don't know the wording of until you break the shrink wrap on the product, which in doing so automatically binds you to those terms and conditions you didn't know the wording of...

@allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Little known fact, Talkie Toaster is infact an incarnation of Box, a portable handheld supercomputer from the earlier BBC TV show Star Cops.

Animated gif of Box

Re: Seriously

"Hedge porn", so named because of its location and contents...

Cigarette?

Re: Anyone remember the Atari Lynx?

I have a few Atari Lynxs, the first gen is big enough and heavy enough to have sat on your bedside table to be used as a bludgeoning weapon in the case of a break-in, and it wouldn't get the attention of the police in the same way a baseball bat by your bed would.

I also have a pile of Sega Gamegears and a mountain of cartridges for them, occasionally I'll scour up 6 charged AA's and give them a whirl. Fun for a while but the biggest letdown of the handhelds of that era is the LCD screen quality, very poor viewing angles and low resolution. The phones/tablets of today have in comparison astonishingly good screens, but what they lack are the physical control buttons needed for 'proper' gaming.

I'd pitch in for one of these new fangled Spectrum handhelds but after spending lots of time on the Android emulator Marvin with a bunch of games and a bluetooth games controller I realised nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Plus I still have a working ZX Spectrum +2 :)

Re: Ah, Arthur C Clarke "half baked ideas"

Did this vague idea occur after watching that 1974 film Zardoz by any chance?

Re: Does it include ATM downtime?

Knowing my luck I'd get the junk Lloyds debit card version that at first allowed me to use it in any card machine, then it would only work in Lloyds machines for many years before the restriction was lifted.

Bitter? Moi?

You damn right!

Re: The google Effect

I just looked at streetmap.co.uk for the very first time.

Yeuch!

I see what you mean about the amount of screen space taken up by adverts, and the entire interface, layout & colour scheme looks like it came from the 90s! I had this horrible flashback to Win95 and the early days of the web, as seen through Netscape Navigator and searching with AltaVista.

Re: Security Theatre

The Dutch drone was the same 230 size as a Syma X5C but actually a Spyrit Max FPV T2M which reportedly weighs 580g with the camera and prop guards, which they didn't have on for the tests.

A Cheerson CX-20, 360 size, brushless motors, approx 1kg weight, has killed an eagle that attacked it - http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=33893158&postcount=56152