Posts by Stevie 7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008
I notice one feature wasn't mentioned in the article. The iPad air, according to the Apple website, has a face camera that features (and I'm quoting directly from their own blurb) "Backside Illumination".
Difficult not to love people who could come up with that feature. I shall be keeping a weather eye open for young women using the iPad Air as the evenings draw in. Gruntgrunt.
For the same reason spinning the ISS for gravity is not done and MIR was not used as a Mars-Earth shuttle: Science.
Now, go research the subject for a couple of hours and be less under-informed. Start by finding out how much fuel is needed to get into "higher orbit".
Once you understand the diminishing return of that, look up "space trash" to understand why crashing satellites back to Earth is better than leaving them in orbit.
To paraphrase the American Guest in the Waldorf Salad episode:
"Never tried it. Never will".
I'm hoarding jars of pickles, cans of fruit & veg and barrels of nails. When it all goes tits up I'll be able to trade for whatever I need at premium exchange rates irrespective of the fiendish Chinese, scheming Russians and red-bottomed Chechnyan ladies infesting the interwebs.
[4 fixit_f ] "We're a selfish, destructive, self important and pointless race ..."
Oi! Speak for yourself! Personally, I am a generous, creative, self-confessed genius and boudoir athlete of god-like prowess. When I am gone the world will be a smaller, sadder place, as it will have fulfilled its purpose and will have nothing left to do but to slowly spin down and get swallowed by the Sun grown large.
Unless a bloody great rock hits it first, of course.
"What, despair that you don't like MS or that you somehow feel superior to culture in other countries?
Look at Japan there is this sort of thing all over the place - Anime characters representing products up ten story buildings."
Okay. We can relax then, as long as you'll stay cool the next time footage of some Islamic men herding a flock of burkha wearing women into their part of the mosque hits the airwaves. After all, what we're talking about is someone else's culture, no? And that's off-limits, discussion-wise, no?
Aiee! The Franchyse Thatte Will Notte Dye!
The phrase I'm searching for rhymes with "clucking bell".
Also: There's something fundamentally wrong with talking about a Star Wars movie and not having the chance of at least some minor confusion as to whether you are talking about episode numbers or film release numbers.
Two Questions:
a) Do people actually, really, in real life "flee" when these sorts of things happen? I mean, Facebook...
2) What in the blistering blue blazes is "Feedly", and why couldn't a short phrase saying that have been part of the article viz: People are screaming and fleeing Feedly (a sort of small nuclear accelerator and day-care facility for Andriod device owners_ etc blither drool"
Three Questions.
[4 Wize] "Most games involve some kind of violence"
<nods>. So why didn't the BBC go and ask the team that made Riven to do something similar themed for Dr Who and using the Tardis to hop from world to world instead of a thinly disguised Amber Tarot mechanic?
The shine is off Myst <insert number and subtitle>, but the world-shifting idea works just as well if you sub "Tardis" for "Book of Atrus".
These guys are past masters at making non violent games, some of which have more than a touch of darkness and the creeps in them.
I wouldn't pick any of the non-skiffy artificial languages, especially Esperanto, as your fake-out language of choice.
Most of these have a pretty up-front statement in their grammar primers that they are *auxiliary* languages. Esperanto certainly does.
You need to speak only in Swedish Chef is you want to baffle Law Enforcement translators.
[4 Steve Todd] "You seem to think that anyone who lets you use their cloud services is collecting and collating the data. They're giving you a lump of disk to store stuff on and have no financial interest in mining whatever you chose to put there."
I'd be rather more worried about the information which includes "credit card numbers" being lumped on the disc and then that lump being copied and read by someone who would like to pretend to be me.
But of course, this is Apple and they *never* would be subjected to such attacks and if they were the attacks would fail.
Can't hear the audio of the video here at work, but this is irrefutable evidence that cavemen were alive at the same time as this new Tyranosaurus Muchusspiffius and waxing fat on them. The one in the picture with the visibly well-fed and satisfied gourmand has obviously been picked to the bone.
Actually, I object to horseshirt. If you are gonna quote...
I'll tell you why I object to Airport Nonsense. I object to it because it is not a serious attempt to address the issue of plane hijacking but a sop to the public who think this is "something being done". There's almost nothing more dangerous than "pretend security measures", and I see them everywhere these days.
In the specific case of airport security:
Problem: The vetting for the staff that conduct the searches and operate the machinery turns out to be an off-again, on-again affair, with convicted felons being discovered at the gates every time a journalist cares to look hard enough. See, it costs *money* to do the vetting and low bid is the order of the day. Now, not every felon is unrepentantly evil, but some are and none are legally allowed to work airport security.
Problem: The out of sight part of the airport operation is still as wide open security-wise as it ever was.
Were I to want a box cutter on an aircraft badly enough the last thing I'd do it try and carry it on myself. I'd get a cleaner or maintenance tech to plant it.
I am happy to provide ID saying I am who I am to anyone who asks if I think they have a good reason for asking and I want what they are offering in return for the ID. But more than that, I *don't* want to be travelling with someone who won't provide ID under the same circumstances any more than I want to be in a room with someone who can't wait five days for a handgun.
I don't ride busses. People who do are on their own. They know what they are risking when they get on board. If you can't take the hijacking, don't get on the number 23 is my motto.
I'm not sure why, but after your post I have the picture of someone hijacking a bus by threatening to pour a kettle of boiling water over the driver's head.
However, the bus scenario is as easy to address as the aeroplane scenario, without recourse to elaborate technology. Easier in fact because more weight can be contemplated in the solution.
The solution is: GET RID OF THE ACCESS FROM THE PASSENGER COMPARTMENT TO THE PEOPLE AT THE CONTROLS.
The Bus Case:
Surround the Bus Driver with a partition of the same stuff put between bank tellers and the public. Bulletproof is also Kettle Proof.
The Aeroplane Case:
Replace the idiotic door into the cockpit with a bulkhead. No door means no-one can be blackmailed into opening it. Remove one of the First class toilets and move it into the secure control cabin, and provide a microwave to reheat preprepared meals inflight.
I also suggest two further modifications lest a kettle-wielding maniac also has an axe. A waiver on the ticket indemnifying the airline from damages in the event of an attempted hijacking and a valve that allows the cabin to be depressurized to about 5 PSI, which will put everyone out (a very, very few for good) including the mad axe-toting Al Qeda headboiler.
And yes, if I was going to fly in such an airplane I'd accept the waiver. Anything's better than a mid-flight headboiling.
"Cold weather is just God's way of telling us to burn more Cathoilics". Lady Whiteadder.
As for the nobility being the only ones supporting William'n'Mary, t'was the nobility that supported or rejected every king of England or Scotland since by and large the hoi polio of both countries did as they were told by their betters in those days on pain of being severely killed.
James was unpopular because his rein presaged yet another round of purges in the name of the One True Faith and everyone who had a vote in the matter was a bit sick of it all.
Or at least, that is how I interpret the mass desertion of the commanders of his army upon learning that William'n'Mary had set foot in the country and would very much like to be King if it wasn't too much trouble.
The prevailing mood of the merchant classes of the time seemed to be that there was too much money to be made to bugger about in yet another round of religious murder, crippling the economy (again) and forking-up the nation's market potential (again). William'n'Mary signified the ascendancy of Trade-capital-T becoming the primary concern of the government, seen in them days as Anne Goode Thynnge because everyone could get rich at home instead of getting dead in Johnny Foreigner land. Didn't end well in every case, but that's another story.
Why do you feel the need to euphemism-quote "Papist"? Don't Catholics have a Pope any more? I'll admit the new one is saying some pretty strange things of late, but I hadn't heard he'd been sacked.
All this hoo-hah-ing over the British Common Law, a set of statutes that includes Suss.
For the uninitiated, that's the law that lets the police arrest you because they think you are thinking about committing a crime.
I can't say for sure but I'd bet real money that this is the most grossly abused law on the books in the UK. I've been gone from the place for nearly 30 years and I'd have thought, given the outrage it was generating in the 1980s, that it would have been repealed decades ago.
Doubleplus Ungood, people.
From what I can make out wullie wallace got as far as Derby, then his army got bored since there hadn't been any real fighting to speak of since they crossed the Cheviots, one of them said "Did you spill ma pint?" and got back "Aye, what ye gunna de aborrit?" and that was that for the invasion of England.
" I do not have to carry an ID card simply to prove that I have the right to walk down the street."
And yet, in my yoof, I was never surprised to be stopped by the rozzers for driving on the A45 in Coventry after 2pm and asked why I was out at that time of night. Since I was in a TR6 the answer "for the sheer joy of having the road under my wheels and the wind in my hair" was the usual response, and they always expected to see License, MOT Certificate and Insurance.
The gasman doesn't have the right to go about his business without let or hindrance unless he carries his ID, nor does the electric meter chap. Indeed, the number of specific instances in which ID must be carried while one goes about one's business are legion.
You can be lawfully ejected from University premises for not having a student or staff ID card, for example.
I see no problem with having to prove you are who you say you are if you are getting on a plane with me, though personally I am so fed up with the other horseshirt I rarely fly anywhere these days. It is my hope that others are following suit and that air travel agencies will, as a result, have to confront the real problems in their security rather than go through the current expensive and inconvenient bread and circuses pantomime that does nothing to increase passenger safety from determined terrorists.
It's not the ID that's a problem, it's the incursion of Star Trek science into the business of ID credentials (as in science that only works on Star Trek).
Example: The beyond stupid biometric passport I was forced to invest in this year, along with the equally pointless (and potentially much less secure than before if stuff I've read in these pages is to be believed) biometric Alien Registration Card.
Expensive and dangerously insecure, but I suppose you can say that about anything originating in the head of a politician.
The kicker is that the machines used to do the face-to-photo recognition at the immigration points apparently cannot cope with glasses so they made me take mine off for the photo despite being told I never do so on account of me crashing into things if I do. This time I was mature enough to refrain from asking what would happen if I shaved off my beard, but within three months I went from full beard to Colour Sgt Bourne/Nigel Green muttonchops for the fun of it.
In closing, let me say hello to my NSA monitor and wish him or her the best for what's left of their shift.
The answer to not being ID'd in supermarkets seems simple: lobby for and then enact a law that states unequivocally that if someone is slashed with a broken winebottle or boxcutter by a disaffected yoof, the store that sold the original item later used as a weapon cannot be held in any way liable for monetary damages arising from lawsuits brought by or on behalf of the victims or their families.
Because I'll bet that is where these practices get born. Tesco has no other stake in what age you are when you buy a Stanley Knife. All they (or rather, their legal departments) care about is shielding themselves from massive monetary judgements arising from the sale.
Has always been my favourite real animal, obviously made from the optional bits left over from the Airfix kits God used to make the other animals.
My favourite non-real animal is Opus, in case you were wondering (though in my youth that honour went to the crabs in the seaside pond).
I agree with James. Now we should have a pool on what the stock will be worth, say, one week after the IPO.
I pick $15.
NB I don't say I believe Twitter is "worth" $15 a share. I don't believe it is worth anything as a public company - yet. Give it a year or two and who can say?
Of course, I expect that the tweeting masses will be seeing some unwelcome changes as the company shifts its focus.
People have been predicting sentience spontaneously arising from machines based on "neuron count" for decades, but I don't see it happening. What is needed is some sort of bootstrap.
The behavior that animals with a reasonably sophisticated brain all show is curiosity. I think that whatever makes curiosity work (and I'm convinced it is tied deeply to the brain's "need" to make sense of patterns it comes across to the point of constructing bizarre explanations for stuff - such as the ghost of our cat which was caused by the cat's favorite place to snooze being in eyesight and a shadow being cast where the cat's shadow had been for years producing the image of a snoozing cat in the peripheral vision of both me and my wife) will end up being the bootstrap for sentience.
I also think that the mind could be an artifact of self recursion in this pattern-checking bios. A sort of VMWetWare.
Good luck using one on a modern commode - and possibly void your warranty while doing so.
The *point* of a plunger is more in the suck than the plunge if used properly - forcing stuff that is already bottlenecked will just jam it more firmly and *will* separate a sink j-bend.
The idea is to apply suction to pull the clog out and give it another chance to swirl away as designed.
Yesyesyes, please get the shots next time. I agree that using an iPad as one's primary photographic capture device is as of now an amusing sight for onlookers, but then again, I still use a digital SLR and laugh at you dorks with your smartphoncams. I suspect in a few years you'll be less offended by slate wavers.
To return to the question at hand, phrased so as to include your reservations: Would you look like a prat when teleconferencing with an iPad Air?
Apple seem to think the cameras are much better in the new model. The weight saving seems a goal I can understand, if not understand the mania for. Thinness for its own sake would seem to be getting on a hiding to nowhere. Thinner=more fragile, no?
Does buying the old model iPad make sense now? Is the price/quality of build ratio good? I can't tell from the buzz because of all the rabies infecting commentators.
"the laptop you bought several years ago CAN be upgraded to give it some more relevance years later"
Not so. You'll be lucky if the new devices like SDD are supported by the interfaces available on your old motherboard.
Ask me how I know this, me being in the IT lark and having spec'd several home machines for this fabled ability to upgrade and extend the life thereby.
started skipping through this article soon after the, ignorant, critism about the implied extra cost of the "required" peripherals and the desk space taken up. Hmm. I got one today with a case and PSU. It is now hiding headless somewhere upstairs and I am using it downstairs by the fireside."
So your extra peripheral was a fully plumbed network and whole 'nother computer? What did that cost, then?
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