Posts by Dave 126

Re: So let me get this right..

The Windows teams are expected to take input from MS's strategic business team, which itself would be trying to work out how to use Windows to maximise profits or footholds for other products and services, in a rapidly changing, competitive environment. Or something like that.

The research teams, whilst doing stuff that makes my head hurt just trying to substandard, have in some ways more simply defined tasks.

Re: the unchanged fact that most solid-state electronics...

Even parts - or the connections - that are not designed to move may still suffer some mechanical strain from thermal expansion cycles.

Re: Wait, but laptop still have LCDs

From the article: "it also offered a rather archaic LCD display as illustrated above"

I believe Christian read the article text as meaning that LCD technology in general was archaic, whereas the same sentance could be also read as meaning that this specific LCD display was archaic. I read it as the latter.

Re: On what merit will they be trying to convice the users ?

Exactly.

Just because you could get a desktop GUI Linux application running on a phone, doesn't mean that it would be pleasant to use.

So, you could plug your phone into a TV (and mouse, and keyboard) and use desktop GUI applications, but it would be much easier to just use a separate 'computer on a HDMI stick', which is a form factor that is already available in ARM and Intel flavours. I mean, it just seems a kerfuffle to plug your phone into a TV, and then unplug it all again when you need to pop out for half an hour.

Re: British efforts

"LENR-CANR.ORG A library of papers about cold fusion"

If it were legitimate, the website would by subtitled "A library of papers about some experiments that produce some as-of-yet unexplained data"

A clue is that they have jumped to a conclusion. The other clue is the name 'Rossi' on the page.

Re: Soon...

>Well, have you seen the west's records on Human rights?

If you could move in time, you'd observe more distance travelling a few decades than you would a few thousand miles.

Re: Soon...

>We will be copying Chinese designs... gulp

For much of the last five thousand years, Chinese technological and organisational superiority has been the norm... the Twentieth Century was just a blip.

Well, kind of... Glass technology (what we Occidentals used for drinking wine) opened the doors of chemistry, microscopy, astronomy, perspective in art...

Re: Hardly a surprise

>every second one is broken. This is because Apple use sub-par materials for the application.

The 'application' varies by user.

And that is true of most Android phones, too. My Sony has a cracked screen because I bought the wrong case (also, the screen bezel was thin and made from ABS, not aluminium). If you work on a building site, buy a beefier case - or a 'toughened' model from Motorola or Samsung. If you work in a carpeted office, a slimmer case might be fine. If you buy a Galaxy Edge, you'll struggle to find a case with protective bezels that allows you to use the curved edges of the screen.

All engineering is compromise. A plastic screen will not shatter, but it will scratch and dent. A mineral glass screen won't scratch as easily, but it will shatter. You can pay more money and engineering another compromise: a laminate of mineral glass atop a plastic substrate. Or you could take a hit on the pixel-to-surface distance and make the screen thicker. You can supply the phone with a replaceable plastic screen guard, to nudge the user into replacing it periodically. Sony chose to attach a thin layer atop their screen to reduce shattering, in addition to the normal replaceable plastic. And so on...

Re: Hardly a surprise

>Rubbish. Apple don't manufacture anything of any significance, they just get other companies to make stuff for them from the same Chinese made components that everyone else uses.

That's true of many companies these days. What you haven't acknowledged though is that 'he who pays the piper calls the tune'. By that I mean the customer (Apple, Samsung, whoever), negotiates with the OEMs as to which manufacturing processes are used, the tolerances, yields, materials. Now, just because several companies use the same factory, doesn't mean all parts are made to the same tolerance or QA process - everything is negotiable.

That said, high tolerance parts are cheaper to make (and check) today than they ever have been.

Re: Halfway

>Put it another way: where is there ANY evidence that third party repairs to Apple kit result in security breached?

No, because of this very safeguard:

The fingerprint module is a self-contained enclave that tells the phone that the a thumbprint belongs to the owner. Clearly, a safeguard is needed to stop a bad guy from swapping the fingerprint module in the target phone for a fingerprint module already trained to the bad guy's own thumb. This is done by by iOS comparing the hardware ID of the fingerprint module to the value it is has stored. If it finds an anomaly, it shuts down the Apple

Now, a competent 3rd party repair shop can replace a broken screen without disturbing the fingerprint module. However, a shady repair shop who haven't practised on their own phones before messing around with their customers' phones might mess it up. Hence the Apple support notes that say the error *can* occur from an 3rd party screen repair.

Apple have dropped the ball in communication, policy, and implementation, though.

Re: Cruel and viscious.

>[Before you ask, giving me video of any sort is pretty much a waste of time. I prefer the written word.]

Stephen Fry was a columnist, novelist and screenwriter. His acting and television presenting followed from that.

Paperweight', a collection of his columns, makes a good book to dip into whilst on the porcelain throne. 'Making History' is an alternative history jaunt, playing on the old 'kill Hitler with time machine' trope, but with its own message. Worth a read, certainly more fun than a Philip Roth alternate history novel!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry_bibliography_and_filmography#Books

Re: More words

All that AC said.

His books are good, too. And fascinating to read in the context of his own story of self acceptance.

> He loves shiny Apple stuff that's true, but then a lot of people do.

As did his late friend, Douglas Noel Adams (of Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy fame). Between them, the pair bought the first two Apple Macs in Europe in 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Technology_and_innovation

Re: "... a fair resource ...?

>To me it looks to be another ghastly collection of "interesting facts"

Would you care to suggest alternate sites, so that we may compare and contrast?

I scrolled through quickly, but the format of tests interspersing the videos is in keeping with retaining information. The diagrams about latent heat (just the section I clicked on) would impart knowledge and understanding, not 'facts'.

Maybe you have a different learning style?

Re: Cruel and viscious.

And yet the comments and votes on the forum for the Reg article that Stephen Fry mentioned were mostly on Fry's side.

Re: Stephen Fry picking bad investments? Shirley not!

He was a millionaire by his early twenties. I don't think he needs the money.

Just had a look at Pindex... I can't see any adverts, or other revenue stream. It does appear to be a fair resource for learning about science.

Re: Who ever designed..

Re: http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/application-note/an19fc.pdf

What a beatiful document! Other excerpts:

1. Transformer Wired Backwards

Those dots indicate polarity, not smashed flies.

5. Fred’s Inductor (Or Transformer)

Inductors are not like lawn mowers. If you want to

borrow the one out of Fred’s drawer, make sure it’s the

right value for your application

7. Rat’s Nest Wiring

The LT1070 is not a jelly bean op amp that can be wired

up with 2-foot clip leads.

Re: Who ever designed..

Hehe!

It doesn't help that PSUs don't come branded "Seagate" or "WD", which would make reuniting the right PSU to the right gadget easier, but instead all seem to be labelled "Asian Power Supplies"

I think the troublesome 19v PSU came with an Alba LCD TV that someone bought - it was just as useless as it sounds. I either snipped the cable off the PSU, or wrapped it up in red insulation tape, I can't remember!

Re: Not just sensible cables please - sensible hardware too!

And yet I have a selection of more than a dozen sleeve-and-tip connectors in a draw (they came with a universal laptop PSU), of every internal and external diameter, some with pins. Engineers had this selection to choose from, yet they still arrived at using the same connector for 12v and 19v.

And yeah, sleeve-type connectors make tracing the polarity tricky, too.

Once these USB-C teething troubles are ironed out, I look forward to the ensuing sanity of powering bigger kit. Just as 5v 0.5A / 1.5A has become convenient for smaller gadgets.

Re: Who ever designed..

I've damaged a 3.5" external HDD by mistakenly using a 19v laptop psu, instead of a 12v PSU. My fault, though I had some ill thoughts towards the world that would use the same physical connector for both.

Luckily, snipping a certain diode off the HDD's PCB got it working again, in theory indefinitely (though I copied the data off pronto). And yeah, had I been more responsible with my back up routine, I wouldn't have needed to go that length.

Akin to real life, when looking for car keys. If they are on the desk right in front of me, I don't spot them.

I've been trying to find any news about Adam Curtis since I noticed he hasn't been active on his BBC blog for about year - just before his film Bitter Lake appeared on iPlayer.

If it wasn't for a small paragraph and a photo of him appearing at a small film festival to collect an award in the Autumn for the above film, he might as well have disappeared off the face of the planet as far as the internet is concerned.

He hasn't used his Twitter account in years.

Anyone here know what he's up to?

Re: I'm with Morozov

So, to summarise your post: Slactivists exhibit much the same dynamics as normal politics.

Okay, so I don't completely mean that, but a discussion about the difference between the two might be constructive.

Re: Marvin

>Hawking opinion on it is worthless...

Anonymous Coward opinion on it is worthless...

FTFY

Re: you missed one

Dark.Star

co-written by, edited by and starring Dan O'Bannon

- Star Wars [computer animator]

-Jodowosky's Dune [never made, sadly]

-Alien [writer, effects supervisor]

-Total Recall

Screamers, a science-fiction film about post-apocalyptic robots programmed to kill. Adapted from the Philip K. Dick story "Second Variety".

That's some career!

Re: An opinion

Well the joy of short (sci-fi) stories is that the author can speculate about different outcomes of the same premise... In the Asimov universe I read, Susan Calvin is long dead before the Robots develop the Zeroth Law. :)

Re: Adding More than Simple Depth to the Widening Web

Bug powder dust and Mugwump jism. Wideboys running around Interzone tripping.

The fruits of their “scientific” labors are what have created our societies and they have been, in the main, if not ignored, dismissed. They have always been perceived as being “eccentric”, “a little bit odd” even “barking mad” but they have left us with all things, some which we can treasure and all that we thought we needed. - dDutch Initiative

Intelligence, which is capable of looking farther ahead than the next aggressive mutation, can set up long-term aims and work towards them; the same amount of raw invention that bursts in all directions from the market can be - to some degree - channelled and directed, so that while the market merely shines (and the feudal gutters), the planned lases, reaching out coherently and efficiently towards agreed-on goals. What is vital for such a scheme, however, and what was always missing in the planned economies of our world's experience, is the continual, intimate and decisive participation of the mass of the citizenry in determining these goals, and designing as well as implementing the plans which should lead towards them. Iain M Banks

Re: Nice review of Robots in fiction ...

>Iain M. Banks is self indulgent fantasy.

To be self indulgent is point of fantasy. Self awareness is throughout Bank's 'A Few Notes On The Culture', an excerpt from which is here:

Certainly there are arguments against the possibility of Artificial Intelligence, but they tend to boil down to one of three assertions: one, that there is some vital field or other presently intangible influence exclusive to biological life - perhaps even carbon-based biological life - which may eventually fall within the remit of scientific understanding but which cannot be emulated in any other form (all of which is neither impossible nor likely); two, that self-awareness resides in a supernatural soul - presumably linked to a broad-based occult system involving gods or a god, reincarnation or whatever - and which one assumes can never be understood scientifically (equally improbable, though I do write as an atheist); and, three, that matter cannot become self-aware (or more precisely that it cannot support any informational formulation which might be said to be self-aware or taken together with its material substrate exhibit the signs of self-awareness). ...I leave all the more than nominally self-aware readers to spot the logical problem with that argument.

It is, of course, entirely possible that real AIs will refuse to have anything to do with their human creators (or rather, perhaps, the human creators of their non-human creators), but assuming that they do - and the design of their software may be amenable to optimization in this regard - I would argue that it is quite possible they would agree to help further the aims of their source civilisation (a contention we'll return to shortly). At this point, regardless of whatever alterations humanity might impose on itself through genetic manipulation, humanity would no longer be a one-sentience-type species. The future of our species would affect, be affected by and coexist with the future of the AI life-forms we create.

- http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm

-Iain M Banks

(Sun-Earther Iain El-Bonko Banks of North Queensferry)

Copyright 1994 Iain M Banks

Commercial use only by permission.

Other uses, distribution, reproduction, tearing to shreds etc are freely encouraged provided the source is acknowledged.

Re: Interest in AI has definitely flucuated over the years

Sounds like your instructor was an old hippie who had read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...

A tutor suggests that a student overcome their inability to write about a house by writing thousands of words about a brick.

>"Books have formed the foundation for many filmic adaptions and contemporary creative investigations into the relationship between AI and human consciousness."

>I see what you did there.

So do I :)