Posts by h4rm0ny

Re: Price @DrXym

You seem wedded to your initial post despite all the flaws in it. In response to your points:

>>Even if we were to say the hololens is more complex, that still doesn't justify the honking disparity in the price of the kit or that its a barrier of entry

Firstly lets dispense with the weasel words. There's no "even if..." The HoloLens IS more complex than Oculus Rift. The Oculus is a display that you connect a GPU up to. The HoloLens is far more than a display. It has high end processor, GPU, a custom-designed chip for integrating the input from its camera with sound signals (which it has tiny speakers for rather than normal headphones as it's designed to augment ambient sounds) and movement, et al. It uses Kinect technology to handle gesture recognition and the software handles interaction of the AR objects with real-world physical objects. Just attempting to equate the two betrays a wilful bias. As to "barrier to entry", honestly $3000 is peanuts to all but the amateur developer. Even a small development house will eat that easily.

>>And if this disparity carries over into production then woe betide them. VR will be a hard enough sell (which IMO will fail). Something costing more again isn't going to do any better.

Again, this wilful ignorance in conflating VR with AR. Different technologies and different purposes. I don't think VR will fail, btw. For games it is amazing. But that's an aside. The point is that being able to casually share what you're seeing with an expert or colleague somewhere remote and also have them drawing arrows or highlighting things in your vision as one small example of how AR will be used, is not the same category as playing Elite Dangerous in VR for example. There is no basis to say "well if it costs £300 to play a game in VR, a doctor certainly wouldn't pay twice that to be able to conference with the hospital consultant when examining a patient". It's an utterly nonsensical argument that makes me question just how stupid you can be.

>>Oh you mean like a phone? It doesn't justify the cost. Furthermore, if it is more like a super-light computer it bodes ill for the retail price of this thing if/when it finally sells

Yes, like a phone. Many people buy subsidised phones on contract and don't look at the actual full price. An iPhone 6 unlocked costs around £550. Now imagine that instead of being a mature product in mass production by the million, it was a limited run thing not even pre-release and they'd only made 20,000 of the things. How much do you think it would cost then? Again, your analogies are dreadful and contrived only to try and damn the fact that the HoloLens development kit costs $3,000 which really isn't that much. It's even in the reach of home developers if they really want it, let alone actual companies. You have no idea how this sector works at all. Either that or you're hopelessly biased and think everyone else here is an idiot.

And it it wasn't when DK 1 and DK 2 were released. It's not a valid point.

Okay, you think you can make statements about final costs of HoloLens from an early beta and you're justifying that by comparisons to a different product in a different category which, despite what you say actually didn't start off at the same price as it happens. Oculus began with a $2.5m kickstarter to front-load it with cash. Those who contributed less than $300 subsidised those that paid more. But that's minor details which I shouldn't even bother correcting because it takes away from the point that your fundamental approach is wrong.

>>"Denigrating the Oculus doesn't remove the point that their dev kit is and has been 1/10th of this thing."

Okay, I am NOT denigrating the Oculus in any way or form. It's great. I think it will be a big success. I also think it will be a huge boost to the GPU industry (especially AMD who sorely need it). Do NOT put words into my mouth. Pointing out that they are very different products with different technologies and goals is NOT denigrating anything. Do NOT pretend that you are somehow defending Oculus against HoloLens. All you are doing is making silly comparisons that harm both.

>>Microsoft is trying to pitch this thing at games - witness various demos they've made of it for that purpose, e.g. minecraft video. In fact they're on record as justifying buying Minecraft for hololens. And their plans include XBox One front and centre and it's hard to imagine that the device would possibly succeed or achieve mass market sales otherwise.

Hard to imagine for you, maybe. I can think of dozens of non-game uses for HoloLens and MS have been demonstrating such uses. Yes, that includes games. It is not limited to games. And again, you're hopelessly muddled in your thinking and floundering around for ways to make Oculus and HoloLens sound like they're attempting the same thing. Games for HoloLens wont be the same as games for Oculus. AR is not VR and I don't see a lot of overlap in terms of how games will make use of them. Imagine doing a space simulator or first person shooter in AR. It's a nonsense idea - you'd be watching semi-transparent people running around overlaid on your walls and desk which would be swinging around you with no connection to the world you were playing in. But no, because MS want to have Minecraft playable on your carpet, or have several friends sitting around the dining room table playing a real time strategy game on it, your limited brain goes "but these and FPS and Simulators are all games - therefore Oculus and HoloLens are similar. MUST POST ON REGISTER!"!

There are few people on this forum as stupid as you.

Re: Price

>>"Perhaps a better price comparison is with Google Glass. That was $1500, rather more than Occulus, half the price of Hololens."

That's a much more sensible comparison than Occulus as Google Glass is in the same category of HoloLens. HoloLens is a lot more sophisticated though. Google glass was essentially a small projector extension that provided a 2D overlay onto one of the eyepieces. HoloLens is a great deal more sophisticated both in terms of display and in terms of processing power and software. Have you seen that demo where HoloLens is projecting a Minecraft game ONTO a table. I don't mean as a flat image, I mean that you can turn or tilt your head and walk around the table and see the 3D blocks piled up on that table shift in perspective as if they were there? HoloLens is much more than putting 2D txt messages on a lens. But this isn't me arguing a point with you - you simply stated facts. I'm just adding why I think the two should not lightly be compared. In fact, I'd go further - with HoloLens being so much more than Google Glass, I think double the price for a developer kit works pretty well.

Re: and then there is the Microsoft Surface book

Actually, the Surface Book looks better than the MacBook Air, imo. Touch screen and an OS that takes advantage of that, almost certainly a much more powerful GPU, detachable screen (it's a hybrid). It looks seriously impressive.

(But sadly horribly expensive).

Re: Price

>>"True but the Oculus dev kit is $350."

* The Oculus is a couple of months from launch. This is an early beta.

* The Oculus is small screens in front of your eyes connected to a GPU in your computer. This is essentially a super-light computer that you wear.

* The Oculus is a VR device. This is an AR device. These things are not the same thing. They serve different purposes and work in different ways and have different demands.

* Approx. £2,500 is not that much for something focused on professional development houses which is what this is. The Oculus is being used for games right now and home hackers - it's essentially a pre-release product at this point.

But mainly and most of all, AR is not the same as VR. Different goals and different challenges.

Re: Am I the only one ...

No, but it's going to have repercussions. I was recently involved in a deal that the Safe Harbour provisions were an explicit condition of. That contract is already sealed and I don't expect it to come back across my desk because of this... However, I wouldn't bet money on it. We (well my client - I sell my services as a consultant) will still abide by the provisions and we treat customers' data protection extremely seriously. But we've just lost some assurance under law, I think. This WILL affect business deals. I know of a couple first-hand which have been lost not because of this specifically, but because of concerns about sharing data with US companies generally. And if I know of a couple first hand, there are more out there. It's definitely an issue. Though speaking as a European, I approve of this being taken seriously by our courts.

I'd guess they're being downvoted because Microsoft would be damned by the business world if they removed them and calling for a class action suit for something MS are themselves trying to get businesses to move away from. MS have provided a replacement for VBA and it's been in Office for a little while now. You can use Office Webapps to do most of what you'd legitimately want to do in Office and security controls are built into them from the ground-up. You create a manifest XML file which can lock down everything from whitelisting external servers it can connect to (if any), whether it can access contacts list, access controls, you name it. And by scanning the manifest file you can both know exactly what a webapp can and can't do and this is also enforced by the system, it's not just a label. If a webapp tries to do something it's declared that it can't, it's blocked from doing so. The tools are all actually there. Getting a large body of legacy users to ditch everything and move forwards - now that's the difficult part and MS would kill their customer base by trying to force the issue. You link yourself to guidance on not using Macros. The OP isn't being downvoted for advocating not using VBA, they're being downvoted for placing the blame on Microsoft / Office.

MS have actually done pretty much everything that could have reasonably done without removing VBA support from Office. By default, VBA macros wont run, you get pretty clear warnings if you try. And it actually tracks the source of VBA macros and treats them differently so it knows if one is, say, just from some document you downloaded from online / got from an email. Indeed, this latter is a step beyond what LibreOffice does where you could equally insert macros into documents.

Basically, place blame where it should be and use modern tools, not old legacy ones. Nobody should be churning out VB macros in an enterprise environment anymore and those who have them should be migrating away from them. But then how long did it take to get enterprise to move away from XP with its vastly inferior security model to Windows 7? Or to move from IE6/7/8 to the much more secure and standards compliant 9/10/11 ? In both cases, MS had to practically hold a knife to their customer's throats to actually get them to shift. Calling for a class action suit against MS because of this is just silly and the OP is rightly downvoted for doing so.

Re: Unsurprising. This *is* Samsung after all

I was coming here to post something similar about Samsung. This is the company that has literally tried to hand judges a briefcase full of cash, movie-style. This is kind of a re-post but last time I shared this story it was over a year ago, so here's an anecdote about Samsung.

In 2006 Samsung was sued by Pioneer for infringing their patents on Plasma TV technology. A memo from a Samsung engineer used as evidence showed that they knowingly infringed on the patents. Rather than agree a licencing fee however, Samsung counter-sued and buried Pioneer under suits and appeals. Pioneer was awarded $59million in damages, but got buried in punitive legal actions from Samsung and a few years later shut down the television division, in large part because of this. Ten-thousand people who worked in that division directly or indirectly, lost their jobs

They're a fun company.

Re: @TwoWolves Safety vs Security

>>"I'm more than willing to give up preventing every attack if the government would get out of the business of mass data collection, especially considering that we've known every terrorist before the event yet the services seemingly have their attention somewhere else (like up their ass apparently)."

In a nutshell, the Intelligence Agencies' goal is to protect the state, not the people. For the time being, preventing terrorist attacks is part of that because terrorist attacks make people unsettled and demanding change, but it's not their only goal and it doesn't have to coincide. If the people become the threat to the government, then the people are the enemy. And to an extent, the people are always a threat to the government.

Re: @ TwoWolves Safety vs Security

>>"Has it occurred to you that the worst case scenario is what's happening in Syria right now? Can you live with that? Where would you flee?"

Has is it occurred to YOU that Bashar Assad's Syria was a place with an out of control state apparatus where intelligence agencies / secret police didn't have to obey due process and the populace had no means of controlling them other than violent revolution? What makes you think that Syria is at the opposite end of a surveillance state, rather than its conclusion?

Re: Boggle

I'm sure there are some decent MPs. They may not end up leading their parties, mind you. But I'm sure they're there. The issue with not fully understanding what you've signed is, well, how could you? When there's only one source of information on something (your intelligence agencies) they can present things in all sorts of ways. Anyone here has probably seen enough comments on a divisive issue that would convince almost anyone if there wasn't an opposing viewpoint or someone to provide context. I've seen posts both pro- and anti- global warming either of which would equally convince someone who had just wandered in without any background and in many cases the content of those posts is factually true in both cases. How much easier is it to fuddle some minister who you're telling lives may depend on them signing some bit of paper and that you know all sorts of things they don't that make it valid.

Of course there is a need for someone (apparently judges) to come along and say "well... did you know that when they said this they meant that?"

Which of course is why this document describes judges as a threat. Same way someone who is trying to convince you that AGW is true / false regards anyone not allied with them as a threat. GCHQ strive to be the only source of information to MPs and when you're the only source of information, getting signatures is usually pretty easy.

Lone Wolf / Loan Shark

Am I witnessing two figures of speech breeding with each other and spawning progeny? Lone Wolf is the traditional term for a rogue actor, no? Loan shark is a disreputable money lender. Where did "lone shark" come from?

Re: Edited for objectivity

>>"Originally, he was quoted as saying e.g. "One of them must have accidentally knocked the camera and set it off... He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus..." which strongly implies that these photos weren't intended"

I think you may be conflating two separate incidents here, either directly or because newspapers (whose goal is to sell, or get hits for the online versions) have previously conflated them. At one point, David Slater unwisely left his camera lying there and the monkeys absconded with it and his guide ran after them and got it back. In a separate incident, he set it up a tripod and stayed close to it.

Now one can argue a case that the copyright isn't his because he's lying about the circumstances (still very shaky though that it's now no longer his property), but given that there were only two people present in the jungle and we have a presumption of innocence, it's rather off to start taking this tack that he is lying - i.e. the copyright isn't his, therefore he lied about the circumstances. That's working from conclusion back towards the argument.

Re: Speed Cameras?

>>"PETA walking on litigious eggshells I feel. Perhaps they should pay this blokes costs and huge compensation for loss of earnings ... then be fined for wasting the court's time."

He probably wouldn't want it (though recovering some of the £10,000 he's lost so far from all this would likely be welcome). He loves these monkeys and a big part of what motivated him to do this trip and finance it was to help raise awareness about them and the fact that they're becoming endangered as their environment is encroached upon and they are being eaten as the spread of Catholicism in Indonesia lessens the prohibitions against eating monkey meat. He's also previously gone out and photographed wild boar to help a campaign PETA had to protect these animals (a little bit more dangerous than monkeys!). He's a conservationist and animal lover who works to protect these animals.

PETA turning on this guy is like watching a roadrunner trying to eat its young.

Re: The day a monkey decides to bring it's own lawsuit

>>"Just to work out what your criteria are here, and as a thought experiment, what if we replace your notional "monkey" with the counterexample of an adult human with severe learning difficulties? Such a person might also not be able to bring their own lawsuit, or go on the witness stand in a way useful to their case. Do you consider that they would (should) have any photographic rights in this kind of `selfie' case?"

Even someone with pretty severe learning difficulties is almost certainly going to have a grasp of contexts and purpose that the monkey doesn't. You're going off on the wrong track however. The question isn't ability to understand what is happening but the level of creative input. If I set up a camera, the set design, the lighting, decided on angles and poses for the model whilst I walked around the set and my assistant was pressing the button would they have more creative input than me because they were the mechanical trigger for it? No. And to be absolutely clear, this is NOTHING to do with any legal agreement they have to do work for hire, it's strictly about "do they have the creative input" for it and "are they resourcing this". The answer to both is no. Just as with the monkey. Your sliding scale of intelligence is a red herring. The photographic assistant is perfectly capable of understanding what is going on but they're not the artist in this instance. Nor was the monkey. The monkey didn't set all the little details of the camera up to be appropriate for the lighting, they didn't do selective work on the photograph or travel all the way to Britain to use the camera. Both resource and creative input were Slater's. The monkey's ability to comprehend is not the primary issue, it is a secondary one that leads to the fact that it has not contributed creatively.

Re: Thankyou for the facts

>>I wonder how the original story came about? It would take somebody very mean-spirited to suggest that it was made up to make it more likely that papers would buy the photo, on the basis that "monkey takes selfie" is more likely to sell than "monkey triggers camera-trap".

Humans prefer a lie that entertains them to the truth, in most cases. Once someone (anyone) says that the monkey stole the camera rather than walked up to a low-set tripod, that is the version that will travel around the world and be printed in the papers. Because it is more entertaining.

Re: Excel Co Authoring or not?

Just like GNU/Linux was the best thing that ever happened to Windows, I suspect Google Docs is / will be the best thing that ever happened to MS Office.

When you scare them enough, MS can produce some wonderful software.

Re: The name Mohamed has earned its Terrorist Rep

At the risk of wrestling with a pig, have you done a comparison with how many people named Mohammed or Ahmed haven't "blown themselves up" ? There are two billion muslims on the planet and most of the male ones have some variation of Mohammed somewhere in their name. So, given your obvious belief that names determine behaviour, what you're telling me is that the chance of someone called Mohammed building a bomb is something like 2,000,000 to 1? Great, sounds pretty safe to me.

Re: Why he weas arrested?

And fifteen of the nineteen investigated were from Saudi Arabia and all were backed by Saudi funding. But America still managed to invade the wrong country over it (twice). So... your point? Are you some believer in Nominative Determinism?

Re: My friend did take a bomb to (primary) school.

People seem mostly raised to avoid all personal responsibility these days and abdicate everything to authority. Which is the goal of many in authority these days - cogs in a machine not co-operating independent actors. It's as much this as it is idiocy and lack of education. We haven't evolved a difference in our brains in fifty years. The smarts are still there in most cases, it's just people have been taught to turn them off.