* Posts by Dave 126

10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Woman caught on CCTV performing drunken BJ blew right to privacy

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Shouldn't the question be...

Yeah - Jeremy Beadle used to pay £250 for video clips... neatly, that is the same amount as the fine for smoking in an enclosed public place.

Our 4King benders are so ace we're going full OLED, says LG

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: HDR?

>HDR photography involves taking a range of photos of different brightness of the same scene, and picking the best of the darks, middles and brights, and manipulating the images in software to make it narrower overall.

'Exposure bracketing' (taking several photos with different shutter speeds) is one way of generating a HDR file, but some modern DSLRs are already capable of capturing a higher dynamic range than a LCD or print can convey. Regardless of how it is generated, this file can be 'squashed' down to a final image that can either look tacky, or can look more realistic than a normal photograph.

Of course the issue is that our eyes are pretty darned good, continually adjusting to the lighting environment, and our brains do a lot of 'post processing' to give us the illusion of a wide, sharp field of view. If we look to a bright sky our pupils narrow, and if we look into the shadows our pupils dilate - our eyes don't take in all the dynamic range they are capable of simultaneously, but our brains make us think that we do. Of course our eyes have limits - hence welding masks and light vision goggles.

>So while HDR in future technology would most certainly be a good thing, I think we're a long, long way away.

Some of the pieces are falling into place: provision for the extra data (depth) per pixel is a part of Rec. 2020, which defines various aspects of UHD video.

Dave 126 Silver badge

There's a better case to be made for curved computer monitors than there is for TVs.

Dave 126 Silver badge

A lot of people choose not to buy plasma because they wanted to use it with games consoles or as PC display. The latency of plasma wasn't ideal for gamers, and the fear of screen-burn put off others.

My sports-watching friends love their plasma, however.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: content is king

>That would certainly explain the runaway success of 3DTV

For sure, the lack of depth perception is one way we can distinguish an image from reality. However, it is most noticeable with foreground objects against distant background objects. In addition, a lot of our depth perception doesn't require two eyes because our brains still perceive the same parallax from small movement of our heads - something that 3D specs can't replicate, but a moving camera can infer.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Is LG a good brand?

"Lost all faith..." is correct, a few other TV vendors, including Sony, will occasionally or exclusively use LG-made panels.

LG sell a wide range of televisions, some said to be very very good, some said to be mediocre. This is usually reflected in the price, where one 1080p LG set can cost twice as much as another 1080 LG set of the same size.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I wonder if they've spent any money on the UI

>I wonder if they've spent any money on the UI

Yes they did, LG bought WebOS.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: content is king

>Of course, like audio-phools, many home cinema enthusiasts like buying and/or tinkering with hardware

Anyone can tell the difference between looking through a window and looking at a TV displaying the same scene. This should tell you that there is clearly room for improvement, especially in the area of dynamic range.

Most people couldn't tell the difference between a reasonably good stereo system and a stupidly expensive one with cables made from the fleece that Jason and the Argonauts retrieved.

Yeah, some content is shit, and Tommy Cooper isn't going to be any funnier in 4K, but some people do enjoy beautiful cinematography and natural history.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Same best practice as mastering audio - make high dynamic range content available to the consumer, and they can use their playback equipment to level the volume/brightness as they see fit.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: HDR?

>High dynamic range. This makes recording in the dark clearer to see, although not sure how this translates on Tele?

Imagine a photograph of a white car on a sunny day. With a traditional camera, you have use an exposure appropriate to the environment, and your 'output' is a piece of paper, with white being the brightest and black being the darkest. In your printed photograph, the car would appear to be just as bright as the sun - the dynamic range is constrained by the paper.

Now, imagine if your output was formed of pixels, each of which could either be as bright as the sun or as dark as a coal mine. The white car would appear white, but your eyes would now perceive the sun - and highlights on the car - as being far brighter. This display would be far closer to how we perceive the everyday world around us than a paper print - or traditional LED TV - could be.

For this to work, the whole workflow - from camera, through editing and onto the display - must contain extra information per pixel.

Your car dashcam is probably capturing a HDR information, but its output is a conventional LED screen. Because its purpose is to capture evidence (a license plate on a sunny day, or at night) rather than to give you a realistic image, it will massage its raw sensor data into a JPG.

DSLR cameras can dump their sensor data to a RAW file, allowing the photographer a little bit of margin over exposure at the post-processing stage.

Intel's cheap and Android's free: Not any more, says TAG Heuer

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Front runners?

>In terms of cool watches, why have a smart watch when I have a smart phone in my pants pocket?

Because you can't read your phone when it is in you pocket? (Unless you have transparent trousers) This is the very same reason that wristwatches became popular over fob watches.

Don't get me wrong - there is no current smartwatch implementation that I want, but the concept itself is sound.

Dave 126 Silver badge

TAG Heuer and Google are no strangers

Tag Heuer had a range of 'Vertu-lite' phones - one a classic candybar with keypad and sapphire screen, another was a Android affair - with all the usual bits of alligator and precious metal hung off it.

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/manufacturers/TAG-Heuer

Dave 126 Silver badge

>Let TAG design the case, strap, and over all exterior look while Google/Intel make the tech inside.

That'd be a good concept - produce a module that established watch makers can incorporate into their designs.

Hello? Police? Yes, I'm a car and my idiot driver's crashed me

Dave 126 Silver badge

>With 40% of crash involving fire, do we need another source of ignition?

Well, given the huge number of sensors, junctions and actuators on modern cars' internal networks, I can't see what difference this device will make re fire risk.

Man hauled before beak for using drone to film Premiership matches

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: cool music - can anyone identify it ??

I don't know - have you tried using a Shazam or TrackID app on your phone?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Screw the legal aspect for a moment...

Hmm, all of those football spectators must give off a bit of body heat - is there any drone that ride the thermals like a kestrel?

For his purposes, a small blimp might be better - and safer. Obviously there are some very well funded outfits looking into methods for observing an area for long periods of time... though something that can be taken out with an air-rife is of limited use in areas where the locals will take exception to being spied on.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Screw the legal aspect for a moment...

...and tell us what crazy battery technology he was using to keep a drone in the air for 45 minutes!

What was he using and where can I get some!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Perjures?

>Interesting snippet - the plea ("guilty or not guilty?") is not taken under oath.

That is an interesting snippet. There isn't a penalty for perjury for pleading not guilty if you are then convicted, but in reality pleading guilty early will often result in a reduction of the eventual punishment.

Apple Watch is like an invasive weed says Gartner

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Apple Watch

>Pebble have got the power/functionality balance right imo.

Exactly. There are few different sweet spots on that power Vs function graph (Casio and Citizen at one end, Apple at the other, and Pebble sitting in the middle), and people will have their own preferences. (Mine would be a conventional looking analogue watch with a monochrome dot matrix display behind the hands, invisible when not in use... much like Martian Smartwatches*)

With regards to the article, the 'ecosystem' that the Apple Watch is a part of is contactless payment. It's up against banks, Google, retailers and mobile operators, depending upon the territory. Apple's system looks to be the best for the consumer (doesn't collect purchase history as the retailers, banks and Google would so dearly like to), its only significant downside is that one must own an iPhone to use it.

*I just learnt about them today. Price point of just over £100, two day battery life, vibration notifications, unobtrusive dot matrix display behind analogue hands, iOS and Android, mic and speaker for Siri / Google Now integration. They have partnered with an existing fashion watch brand - 'Guess' - which strikes me as a sensible enough move; make an unobtrusive module and let let experienced watch brands take care of the industrial design and marketing. http://www.martianwatches.com

You – yes, YOU – can now 3D print your very own Paul McCartney

Dave 126 Silver badge

Weird single

It sounds like a second rate David Bowie knock-off. Hell, Bungie should just have licensed Bowie's 'Heroes' for the game.

Watchdog slaps American Apparel's youthful naked arse

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What is more concerning...

Women wear such garments with jeans, and it keeps the top fairly taught thus accentuating their breasts and flat bellies.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Would that be the same Daily Mail that printed pictures of a 13 year-old Princess Beatrice in a bikini? Yes it would, and for extra hypocrisy points, said bikini pic was printed opposite a leading article attacking Chris Morris' excellent spoof documentary 'Brass Eye: Paedogeddon'.

Dave 126 Silver badge

>because she is an evil ginger.

Bizarrely, she is only a ginger in the back and 3/4 back shots. In the front pictures she is a tanned brunette.

$30 Landfill Android mobes are proof that capitalism ROCKS

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: "Higher prices mean cheaper electricity for everyone"

>I don't know why but I always have a suspicion that I am being taken for a ride but am not bright enough to know what ride that is.

I'm sure you're bright enough, but perhaps you haven't spent too much time thinking about these things? If Mr Worstall inspires you to learn and think more about these topics more then he'll have done you a service, regardless of whether your eventual conclusion is different to his or in agreement.

Even if you think he is selling snake oil, then at least his articles will inoculate you against similar arguments from others.

Dave 126 Silver badge

>better methods of communication always have grown the economy as getting information passed around is pretty much a definition of how to increase economic efficiency.

Terry Pratchett wrote about the impact of Clacks Towers on the economy of the Discworld, in Going Postal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_of_the_Discworld#The_clacks

Samsung puts eight-core processor IN A WATCH

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Whisky in the jar

>8 cores will not help the watch tell the time any more than a single core.

My portable Citizen/Tandy word-processor is just fine as it is. It doesn't need anything faster than its Zilog Z80 CPU or its 14 x 80-character monochrome display in order for me to write documents.

Your phone isn't a phone any more than a Thinkpad or Macbook is a portable word processor; your 'phone' is a connected pocket computer. Similarly, the device Samsung is making is not a watch, it's a wrist-mounted terminal.

From Iain M. Banks, Look To Windard:

"Sorry to disturb you, Ambassador. Hub here. You're closest; would you let Mr. Olsule know he is speaking to an ordinary brooch, not his terminal?"

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Some people will never learn

>please Samsung try and get it right, its all about design, just alerts and great battery life. our phones will do the rest.

Casio (Edifice or G-Shock Bluetooth) and Citizen (Proximity) already make such watches. Conventional sports watch design, indefinite battery life, simple phone notifications.

Google Glass DIED from TOO MUCH ATTENTION, Captain Moonshot admits

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Step by step

>competitors... ...do not look like they should be used in public.

The Sony ones look like sports or workshop protective goggles. A workshop isn't a social place like a bar, and a street - where a cyclist might use them for navigation or recording a careless driver - isn't considered a private place.

It was the case that Japanese camera phones had a 'shutter' noise that couldn't be disabled - a response to fears that they would be used for taking photos without the subject's knowledge. This is the country where school girls can rent space on their thighs for advertising messages.

Sony recalled some camcorders quite a few years ago - the issue was a 'low light' mode that used infra-red, making clothes appear see-through. Sony fixed the 'issue', but people being people managed to undo the 'fix' to restore the functionality on subsequent models, and resold them over the internet.

http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2012/07/in-1998-sony-accidently-sold-700000.html

Are you clever enough, and brave enough, to give a Register lecture

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Stop using the term 'Craft Beer' unless you mean shit.

I saw a sandwich board outside a motorway service station the other day: "Free pastry with each of our hand-crafted hot drinks". FFS.

Rezzed: Indie gaming shows off its finest

Dave 126 Silver badge

Whoah, I remember playing the original. A sandbox car game in which you run over pedestrians, four years before GTA became 3D.

Of course just mowing down pedestrians was easy - big points come from smashing a lamppost down the street to splatter the civilians. Seem to recall that censors insisted on making all the blood green - so that the player was killing zombies (acceptable) instead of humans (moral panic) - though a Hex editor could be used to restore the proper content.

I don't think I ever won a race by beating the competing cars to the finish line... I just beat them into scrap.

Made me remember playing Quarantine (1994) - think 'Doom' in a taxi. It wasn't that good, though.

Hackable media box based on the Raspberry Pi compute module: Five Ninjas Slice

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: LEDs turn of-and-on-able?

1. Spend 30 seconds with some PVC tape.

2. Wait awhile and spend five minutes configuring the LEDs through an app.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Ethernet

> The 100mbit is the problem, nothing will date these devices faster than this.

The review suggests that the device is only just capable of running 4K content, so it would seem that its 100mbit ethernet is matched to the capabilities of its GPU.

Improved Apple Watches won't get more expensive? Hmmm

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Hmmm... smoke and mirrors?

>>" living in smaller houses than their parents (and renting them) etc., etc."

>One would expect young adults to live in smaller houses than their parents (and renting them).

I think he meant " living in smaller houses than their parents did when they were of an equivalent age.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The Cray.

That actual computation isn't directly affecting your quality of life - what you do with that computation might do. You might enjoy better weather forecasts today, or new pharmaceuticals, or a car that has made it market more quickly... but not by a factor of a squillion.

Dave 126 Silver badge

>they really should be saying "hey Apple, you pay so much less now, where the fucks our discount"...

In terms of economics, what it costs Apple to actually make the iPhone 6 is irrelevant, except with relation to how much it costs Apple's rivals to make competing products. The manufacturer will sell their products at a price that suits them (usually to improve margins, but one might discount products to gain market share. Apple have done their sums and determined that enough people will pay the asking price - and APPL's bottom line suggests that they have pitched it well.

Of course, it suits Apple to try and make sure there are no competing products; someone might instead buy a Samsung and it will still make phone calls and play YouTube videos, but it won't be a FaceTime terminal or iWatch companion. The user might have already invested (money and learning) in propriety iDevice-compatible kit, so a HTC handset won't be a swap-out alternative (, i.e level competition) for an iPhone.

This isn't the area of economics that is being discussed in the article. The argument being made is that a computer sold in the eighties for £1000 was a word processor and spreadsheet. It then, slowly, acquired the ability to be a photograph archive, drafting board and music player. Today, it is also a video editor, physical model simulator, and video-phone. (And my ageing Core2 Duo laptop also functions as a fan-heater)

Bride legs it from wedding after groom proves unable to add up

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Eh?

>I'm having trouble seeing the IT angle in this story

India, a country that produces many very very bright mathematicians, physicists and coders, and hosts famed technical technical colleges... and this gentleman restores the balance.

We're not sure what it is, but we like it: Lexus NX300h hybrid SUV

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @Ivan Not sure what it is

>"Some of the curbs at the soccer club are quite high".

Haha!

Actually, you only have to watch someone strap a toddler into a baby seat to see why some people prefer higher vehicles. Simply, the parent has to bend less when holding a heavy object (the toddler), and they stoop less when engaging the straps.

Want that awesome new Apple TrackPad? Don't get a MacBook Pro

Dave 126 Silver badge

Well, that's showing some concern for your fellow citizens who aren't as strong as you are - our population is aging, y'know. Maybe the user has arthritis, and any weight saving saves them discomfort when they move their laptop around their house. Maybe the user has a load of other stuff - paper files, cameras, product samples, whatever - that they need to lug around as a part of their job. Maybe the user travels by air a lot, and the space saved in their carry-on luggage allows them to pack an extra shirt.

Who knows.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Any similar sized laptop good for repair?

iFxit tend to be the go-to site for 'repairability' scores.

The Surface Pro used more glue and 52 screws, according to iFixit. I can't find any guides or teardowns of the Lenovo Yoga 2 or 3 on the iFixit site.

Instead of just researching how easy these things are to repair, you might also research how reliable different brands are, and what their extended warranties and service compare.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @SuccessCase

>Licking the hand that feeds IT ... Doesn't sound like a site I'd bother reading.

And yet the headline could have read "New Macbook Pro - a bugger to dismantle" and been both critical *and* accurate.

Criticising poor products and lauding good ones is in the interest of the consumer and user. Beyond that, not distorting what is said by a source is important.

iFixt merely expressed mild surprise that the Macbook Pro has a different design of trackpad to that in the new Macbook - that is all.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @ Suricou Raven

>As an example, combination of sliding parts, latches and rubber 'stoppers' wouldn't add weight nor thickness to these gadgets,

Yes it would... and it would add complexity, too - making the device both more expensive to manufacture and assemble, and more expensive to recycle. Using glue makes products easier to dismantle when they come to the end of their lives, since they can just be passed through an oven and then pulled apart. This much less labour intensive than unscrewing a dozen or so fasteners.

The manufacturer is responsible for the end-of-life disposal of products now in many territories - so ease of recycling is in their interests.

$17,000 Apple Watch: Pointless bling, right? HA! You're WRONG

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What's the gold worth?

http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-Much-Gold-Is-Really-In-A-Rolex-Watch-/10000000001632748/g.html

The total value of the pure 24kt. gold in this Rolex President is $963.27.

Case ring weights 18.5 grams. Contains 13.875 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $178.43.

Case back weighs 7.21 grams. Contains 5.41 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $69.57.

Bezel weighs 5.30 grams. Contains 3.98 grams of pure gold. It has a value of $51.18.

The bracelet weighs 68.85 grams. Contains 51.64 grams of pure gold. It has the most value at $664.09.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Change in society? -@Dave126

Fair enough, I didn't choose my examples well, except that they weren't 'functional' objects. Still, there are many examples of luxury goods in history that didn't last long - Cleopatra's baths of asses milk, rare foods and spices, gladiators and otherwise useful slaves killed for entertainment. The bottom line is that they were usually displays of wealth power over lesser mortals.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Change in society?

>Once upon a time the point of "luxury" goods was that they lasted

What d'ya mean? History is chockablock with examples of extravagent luxury goods. The eggs made by Faberge, the rare cloth dyes and gold thread for your clothing, gold statues of yourself.

In that context, the gold iWatch is not a sign of society's breaking point, it is just yet another drop in the rain storm of history.

Yeah, once upon a time it was expensive to make durable goods... but modern manufacturing techniques allow inexpensive objects to be functional and durable. The manufacturing tolerances on any cola can, for example, are just incredible. We all can now afford sharper knives, better shoes and more intricate toys than any king of old.

ALIEN LIFE drenched in HOT FLUID on Jupiter's Ganymede – is that so?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Outstanding piece of boffinry

>"Cat, are you drilling?"

Cat, drilling in space, near Jupiter, Mining Corp... I so thought that was going to be a link to a Red Dwarf clip!

Swedish prosecutors finally agree to London interview for Assange™

Dave 126 Silver badge

WAR is against war?

Did WFR not have a spokeswoman available for comment?

For some reason, this thing has reminded me of Tom Sharpe's farcical novels.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Good for him… maybe?

>if the reason for the extradition is retrospectively done away with, is the extradition itself is no longer valid (or considered never valid)?

If Hollywood movies have taught me anything, it is that if you jump bail for a crime you did not commit and then succeed in proving your innocence and killing the swine who framed you, you'll be left free to go home. Also, elevators don't fail safely, and cars explode if they crash above 20 MPH.

Forget viruses: Evil USB drive 'fries laptops with a power surge'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What an idiot.

Actually, just the idea of this might prevent people from using USB sticks of unknown provenance. USB sticks are used (with software payloads) by blackhats.

Dave 126 Silver badge

That'd be a little harder to 'socially engineer', though!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Optional

I've done something similar -I plugged a 19v laptop power brick into a 12v external HDD. Oops.

I recovered the data by snipping off a TVS diode from the HDD's PCB, and was able to recover all the data.

The 19v adaptor got slung in the bin.

For anyone who has done the same: http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/HDD-TVS-diode-FAQ/td-p/250274