Posts by stucs201

trying to play vinyl with a laser

Not trying. Succeding. They've been available for years, they're just not cheap or common. First saw them on Tommorow's World I think, el-reg didn't even exist then.

Nuking it a bad idea,

Looks more like the object from a different Bruce Willis film, it'll get bigger if we nuke it.

Million to one already confirmed...

...by Ogilvy the astronomer. "The chances of anything comming from Mars are a million to one"

re: HDMI

I have to agree. If you're plugging into an external screen then their are other devices with better storage capacity and portability than a tablet. Even an several year old iPod classic does better for this.

What I would find useful is some sort of video *input* to allow the tablet to also be used as a screen for other devices. Either ones where the inbuilt screen is tiny (e.g. iPod classic (again) or DSLR) or devices where a second screen might be useful (e.g. desktop PC (*)).

(*) yes I know software options exist for this, but HDMI input would mean less crap needing to be installed and also allow use with devices where software isn't an option.

re: cropped sensor DSLRs

They're very close to APS-C sized sensors. Canon and Nikon are slightly different to each other, nbut not very much. Nikon has a crop factor of 1.5, Canon's is 1.6. In both cases they can use the same lenses as their film bases ancestors (Nikon going right back to ancient manual lenses, Canon not so far back since they changed mounts when they introduced autofocus). The use of a lens designed for a larger sensor (or piece of film) has two main effects:

1) The image circle projected by the lens is bigger than it needs to be. This can be a positive since lenses which might have had slight vignetting problems are now bright across the whole i image. On the downside you're possibly carrying more glass than you need to be. Both Canon and Nikon have smaller lighter lenses designed specifically for the smaller sensors at those focal lengths where a saving can be made.

2) Framing is as if you were using a longer focal length than the real focal length. Multiply the focal length by the crop factor to get the equivalent. So a 50mm prime goes from being your 'normal' lens to a mild telephoto 80ish mm, which makes a nice portrait lens. A 35mm wide angle prime becomes a nice 'normal'. With zooms its not worth worrying so much, zoom till the framing is right, but you'll find lens changes being required at different times than you're used to.

Alternatively just get a full frame digital.

Re: wargames

Indeed. Skynet is just Joshua with an attitude problem.

Or as I once heard someone say

Showing people being nice to each other will get you an 18 rating much faster than showing them killing each other.

Of course its IT related.

Its about pizza, which is definately IT geek food; I remember a version of 'the hackers purity test' from years ago asking if you'd ever wish you could download pizza. Of course thats a much less silly proposition these days when some places really do let you order via the web-site, pay with paypal and track the cooking/delivery process online.

We must be on the wrong time-line.

According to the doc, in film 3, Mr Fusion was only for the time circuits, the car itself always ran on 'gasoline'. An electric version would imply we're heading for the wrong 2015, bet our version doesn't even have flying cars:-(.

re: English dictionary

I'd normally agree, but I believe the film was set in America :)

A bit hasty to reclaim space...

...shouldn't we just content ourselves with ensuring his termination was done correctly:

dmr\0

Single disk raid 0 might work better

For redundancy separate disks make sense. For speed raid on a single disk might make sense. As the article says we've got from one head for multiple platters, why not extend to multiple heads per platter? Will still be beaten by SSD for pure speed, but might be a viable cost-vs-speed compromise between an SSD and a one head per platter spinning disk.

True, but its a great resolution

4320 is an integer multiple of all of 480, 720 and 1080, so existing content will scale more easily.