Posts by Dave 126

Re: I Wonder

Kit is expensive and glass-and-carbon-fibre-reinforced-plasticy (with magnesium/aluminium bits)

Re: I Wonder

Kit is OK, just install [any fresh OS of your choice] on it

There, fixed it for you.

[Sidenote: My first Linux experience was installing Mint on an ancient IBM Thinkpad with a mate, just for fun... Once we grasped the Linux conventions it was a straightforward job, except that it had odd audio hardware. We got a sense of accomplishment when we got a noise out of it!]

Re: Poor Sony

Sony are no longer guilty of the sins you have highlighted.

These days they make some of the best Android phones (very good battery, microSD card support), some very good cameras, televisions, and their PS4 console is more fit-for-purpose than its competition. They still release some well polished and innovative products.

Sony aren't the only company to pull out of the PC market. The home audio market has also changed shape, with docks and networked systems supplanting traditional hi-fi separates. Sony still make some dedicated audio players, and some good balanced armature / hybrid earphones.

>Only a company truly and completely broken could have let a product like these glasses get to production

The video was aimed at developers, and the goggles are largely intended for environments where eye protection is more important than fashion - i.e workshops and sports. This is a far more sensible approach than Google's desperate attempts to make their Glass product acceptable in social settings.

Re: We are only thinking of your health

>After reading this article I threw away my chair

Mr Ballmer knows it.

Re: It's just a movie....

>What I'm afraid the most of in the Disney's takeover, is that they will turn it back to being mindless "family adventure" and the fans will fall over themselves in orgasmic excitement about pissy lightsabers and crappy pseudo-vintage effects...

The trailer has shown that physical sets and models have been used extensively for this new StarWars film. It would seem that the new director is very aware of the problems with the prequels, and is making an attempt to avoid them.... time will tell if he succeeds.

In fact, the prequels contain more physical effects than the original films, but the slightly ropey CGI, characters and acting distracted from them.

I enjoy political plotting and scheming, but that alone doesn't make a good movie if it is lacking in other areas. Sometimes a classic - archetypal, even - story of good vs evil is more fun, if done well. And let's not forget John Williams' score.

Re: It's just a movie....

>Seems the Star Wars flicks of late have fallen into the "hey, let's do a sequel" without any regard to making a good movie but just a fast profit.

Don't worry, George Lucas had nothing to do with this movie. He has even said that Disney have not used used any of the story ideas he gave them when they bought the IP. Phew!

For sure, James Cameron and Ridley Scott have let us down in the last decade, but Neils Blomkampf, Duncan Jones and Alex Garland have been more-or-less on the money.

Re: Retrogression of the "Force".

>I don't understand why you would make the light saber more primitive for films that take place AFTER all other events.

Nor me, but hey, let's wait til we see the movie! There could be a dozen 'in-universe' explanations for the spitty look, ranging from a loss of knowledge (just as we lost the secrets of Damascus steel) to merely that the bad guy thought it looked cool!

Anyhows, didn't the spacecraft in episodes IV -VI look more primitive than the craft in I-III?

Obligatory Iain Banks:

"So," Ash said slowly. "Let me get this straight: you don't know the machine, but it's probably some ancient nameless Apple clone from the dark grey end of the market, almost certainly using reject chips; it probably had a production run that lasted until the first month's rent fell due on the shed the child-labourers were assembling them in, it used an eight-inch drive and ran what sounds like dodgy proprietorial software with more bugs than the Natural History Museum?"

- The Crow Road, Iain Banks

Re: @SuccessCase BBC Death

> Look at what happened to Tomorrow's World. They slowly dumbed it down until it was like dishwater and then canned it.

There is a real case for bringing back Tomorrow's World... It could be part of a conversation in society about 'the future'; infrastructure, urban planning, demographics, transport, agriculture, architecture, power etc with perhaps a positive, enthusiastic leaning (to counter the 'doom and gloom' messages so often found in the news).

The BBC does have a role to play in supporting society-wide 'conversations'.

Re: An 8K fondleslab?

>PC's no. 5k iMac, absolutely fantastic right now today

There have been some 4k-ish Windows laptops around for a year or so... Reviews suggest that these days Windows scales sensibly, but it is at the mercy of applications, especially legacy applications. Stupidly, Photoshop was unusable on high res Windows displays a year ago - though this might have been fixed now.

Re: Return to land

They still do - there was a good BBC documentary on recently "Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race"*, and the presenter joined the ground crews at they raced to meet the just-landed crew capsule.

However, SpaceX aren't trying to land a relatively inert crew capsule - they are trying to land a rocket stage - with fuel still on board. Landing at sea avoids all sorts of potential bureaucratic headaches and potential PR cock-ups (just in case the rocket stage lands on top of a lone hiker or rare animal), and the rocket stage can be recovered from the sea with less damage - so SpaceX can discover why it didn't land as planned.

*Another highlight was an interview with Alexey Leonov, the first man to conduct an EVA (commentated by Arthur C Clarke in his novel 2010: Odyssey 2.)

And:

Of Course I Still Love You

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/elon-musk-iain-m-banks-just-read-the-instructions

Re: Again "popped"? That's three times ...

>"After increasing the size of the properties array we basically achieved a classical buffer-overflow."

Yeah, it's a heap buffer overflow (achieved by using the UAF), not a stack overflow.

Re: Again "popped"? That's three times ...

Are you feeling alright this week? The link to further information is in the article, in the customary blue.

The linked article says it is a Use After Free vulnerability, not a Stack Overflow.

Re: So?

>By the way, the famous S5 camera gives very nice photos in bright sunshine but is dreadful in dim light.

Most reviews - including dpreview.com's - suggest the S5 camera isn't too bad in low light... but that there is a knack to getting reasonable low light pictures from it.

Samsung might be communicating to its existing user-base that the S6 will not ask them to spend as long in funny menus.

An experienced human photographer will decide what 'human/aesthetic content'* in the scene is the most important to them, and make their compromise accordingly (e.g, trade subject motion blur for lower noise, or trade depth of field for a lower shutter speed). Though a camera will never know what in the scene the photographer want to capture, it can take a fair guess that most of the time a photographer wants human faces to be in focus, and for sunsets to look red and orange. These are normally called 'scene modes', and the next logical step is to have the scene mode selected automatically- Panasonic's compact cameras have an 'Intelligent Auto' mode that is usually well reviewed.

It was good to see the 'Megapixel race' peter out a few years ago, and the rise of 'premium compact' cameras - For the same reason many people choose a DSLR over a Medium Format camera (size), I prefer to carry a good compact to a DSLR. You have to choose your own compromises.

>Personally I hope driverless cars will have taken over the roads before I decide to hand in my driving licence because I am no longer competent to drive.

I can't see driverlesss cars taking overthe roads before 11 pm this evening - I won't be competent to drive by then!

But seriously, driverless cars will allow people to be more sociable in more rural areas.

>By which I mean, what problem or need are they addressing, that couldn't be better served by improved public transport?

Driverless cars will eventually converge with public transport.

-The only public transport that travels from door-to-door at the time the user wants is a taxi - and that is expensive for the user because the human taxi driver needs to make a living.

-Human taxi drivers are known to work until they have made a certain amount of money each evening - on rainy nights they make this amount of money more quickly due to higher demand, then go home - this is why it is hard to find a taxi on a rainy night. (this is explained in the book Freakanomics)

-Driverless cars would allow for traffic junctions that don't require vehicles to stop and start, thus improving fuel efficiency and engine life.

-Driverless cars be instructed well in advance to move to the side of the road, meaning that emergency vehicles can travel faster.

-Driverless cars can improve the capacity, fuel efficiency and safety of motorways, by travelling in networked 'trains'.

Re: Good fucking gawd/ess.

jake, there is no mention anywhere in the article about Microsoft making any reference to the Lion King - those are references made by The Register. Read it again.

(The Lion King is a Disney property - the largest shareholder in Disney was CEO of a big mobile device and compute company, but that company wasn't Microsoft).

Re: Will she

Well, there was that batch of Li-Ion batteries that combusted, used by a few phone vendors... they were capable of boiling a cup of water!

"Cortana: Please order me a Teasmaid and a Roomba from Amazon".

Re: Yes But...

To turn Cortana off, open Cortana's NotebookCortana's Notebook icon > Settings, turn Cortana off Toggle off icon, then restart your phone.

Compared to some settings I've seen in the past, that seems pretty straightforward. No floating around in a red-lit micro-gravity environment required!

Sidenote: Both Kubrick and Clarke thought that HAL's 'brain' would be no larger than a shoe-box, but Kubrick decided to represent it as room-sized purely for cinematic reasons.

Re: It's so soothing

This is an area in which Microsoft are hoping they can distinguish themselves from Google - 'filling a gap in the market', so to speak. Certainly the user seems to have more granular control over what information (location, browsing history, emails, FaceBook etc) Cortana uses.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/how-to/wp8/cortana/cortana-and-my-privacy-faq

Re: Kudos for that JKJ ref

And that is just the first couple of pages!

The narrator just feels a little out of sorts, and so visits the British Library where all human information is available to him (it's easy to see the internet in that). He soon diagnoses himself that he has every ailment known to man or woman - except for Housemaid's Knee. He presents himself to his doctor with "I don't have Housemaids Knee" and the doctor hands him the folded prescription. He only actually reads it after a pharmacist is unable to fulfil it.

Three Men in a Boat is an ideal book to give your sprogs to show them that the Victorians weren't that different from us.