Posts by Dave 126

Re: Dieter Rams

It is Ive, not Ives

Deluded? He was joking with colleagues, something people often do when a project is nearing completion to their satisfaction. "Switzerland is fucked".

He hasn't copied any Dieter Rams design, but rather Dieter Rams' methodology - this requires hard work, as Dieter himself will tell you.

Switzerland doesn't rely on luxury watches.... again, Ive was joking.

Seriously Mage, if you want to talk about Ive and Rams, at least look beyond Wikipedia. Here is an interview with the man himself, for starters:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-Rams-Apple-has-achieved-something-I-never-did.html

Good comment, points well made, reasoning shown.

A smartwatch would mitigate the 'dig phone out of pocket when it rings only to see that it is another PPI cold-call' shuffle. Socially, it is possible that smartphones might encourage more people to leave their phones in their pockets or bags when in company, and not have them sat on a table.

>A hundred quadrillion is about* a third of the number of water molecules in one-hundredth of a cubic millimetre of water. Does that help?

Thank you for your effort, but... I've never seen a molecule of water. Could you possibly scale that up to 'grains of sand in X number of swimming pools', or another other Reg-approved unit of volume?

Re: So basically, MS says ...

>What if the hackers have heard about the gmail "+" trick? If they had, then they'd be able to write a script to defeat your countermeasure.

How?

They would have to brute force your username at the same time as trying to brute force your password. And as we know: lots x lots = shitloads.

Re: andyelliott@outlook.com

Self promoting? They're promoting some software, not themselves. And shit, sometimes you get a good atmosphere of camaraderie in queues... they can be more fun than many people's workplaces.

>But *everyone* needs to use secure passwords. At least for stuff they care to keep secure. It's not a complex concept, really.

Not a tricky concept, but a PITA in practice. Such is life! Some people advocate the use of password managers, though only last month The Reg reported of a security failure in a popular example of the breed.

Personally, I use the tiered approach, so might reuse the same password across low value sites (seldom-visited forums, for example) whereas email and banking sites get complicated (non-dictionary, UPPER lower case, !"£$, numbers, mixed up) passwords.

Re: increasingly @AC

>whereas health bands are probably a fad,

For younger people, maybe... but for older people with, say, heart conditions, 'tele-medicine' is going to pushed ever more by the NHS (and insurance companies) on cost grounds.

Re: Does it matter??

>Put a dog turd on a strap, slap an Apple logo on it and the fanbois will still buy it, claiming that it's world changing technology.

If that were true, Apple would have just bunged some Bluetooth chip in the iPod Nano, and enjoyed some sales for the last few years.

Re: Reading the instructions = cheating??

>I had significant problems copying Spectrum games.

You needed a 'Romantic Robot' module, mate. It was designed to dump the Speccy's RAM to tape, so progress in games could be saved, but it had a side effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiface

Re: eh?

>which means that to get acceptable accuracy the calculation may have to be performed many times in either parallel or series, which negates some of the advantages.

At least it's easy to check the results of the factorisation with a classical computer.

Re: I wouldn't say it is Peak Apple

In support of your argument, I'd also suggest that people are more willing to overlook shortcomings in their tablets than they are in their phones. Most tablets tend to reside in the home, so are closer to a power point.... battery isn't as important. Weight isn't as big an issue, since they aren't carried around as often as phones. Because phones are carruied out and about, they are more likely to incur damage, cosmetic or otherwise.

If a phone runs out of battery, the user is put out of touch with friends and family. If a tablet runs out of juice, a phone can pick up most, if not all, of the tablet's duties.

or a reference to:

-The Ring - Japanese horror film in which anyone who watches a certain videotape dies a week after watching it.

-Monty Python's The Funniest Joke in the World sketch, in which a joke is penned that causes anyone who hears it to die of laughter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gpjk_MaCGM

Re: Battery capacity

Even if you had a technically correct measure of the battery, you would of course still need to know the power consumption of the components to form a useful impression of the phone in real-world use. Although this phone uses the same SoC - Snapdragon 801 - as competitors, some manufacturers have implemented software and hardware features to extend battery life.

If it is really important to you, you'd do better to consult a site that measures how long it takes the battery to run flat under various standardised tests. i.e, Looped HD video, web-browsing, calls etc. Take these Anandtech benchmarks of the LG G3 phone as an example of this approach:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8169/the-lg-g3-review/3

(Graphs. Lots of graphs).

If nothing else, you can compare the battery life of new phone Y, against your existing phone X whose battery life you already have a feel for.

Re: " we do not know how the human body reacts to different gravitational fields"

>The men that went came back fine and their entire trip was monitored, if I am not mistaken.

MachDiamond was talking about years on Mars, not a few days. However, there have been a fair few astronauts and cosmonauts who have spent extended periods in orbit, so NASA and other agencies have a fair bit of data about the effect of microgravity on the body, and the physical exercises the crew do to mitigate them. Most of the issues are related to muscle and bone density, and to the distribution of fluids in the body.

Though the gravity on Mars is less than that of Earth, at least exercise would be easier (less need for crazy-looking elastic gym machinery) than in microgravity.

Personally, if I were to be sent to Mars, I'd place the gravity issue fairly low down on the list of things that were bad for my health... behind radiation, stranded by drive failure, life support system failure and being skinned alive by a crew mate who has succumbed to SPAACE MAADNESS! Okay, not sure about that last one...

Re: meet the new iPad ...

>meet the new iPad ... ... same as the old iPad ...

Indeed. Or at least as close enough to the previous models to give people no big reason to upgrade their existing device.

Older tablets tend to do all that is asked of them - web browsing, video and maybe some games. Assuming that most people who want a tablet have already bought one, there isn't a pressing need for people who already own a tablet to upgrade to a new one.

>How long before a TV comes with a tablet for a remote?

That's a solution that works well. Current implementations include:

iPad + PS3

Android tablet + Chromecast dongle

Of course these solutions aren't fully intgrated (i.e, you can't use tablet to swtich aspect ratios, switch input, or adjust the picture settings etc).

One stupid TV 'feature': Sony TVs that turn themselves off after an hour if they receive no input from their own IR remote... we actually use the remote for the FreeSat box / BluRay drive during use.

Re: Apple

Sue them? On what grounds?

>If there is a real market for this Apple will do it.

Like truly ruggedised laptops, it's not a big market - but it does exist.

If Apple wanted to sell such a machine themselves, they could easily undercut the price of a Modbook, and possibly tweak the OS to give themselves a competitive advantage. Apple can't be bothered with a diverse product range, and so are quite happy for Modbook to fulfil this small niche.

You don't hear Harley Davidson complaining that people keep buying their motorcycles at full-price before chopping them up.

Re: Mobile-specific web pages are usually a UI travesty

>Others disable pinch to zoom. Really? You've lost my pair of eyeballs, because I can't see what you have to show me!

Android > Chrome > Settings > Accessability > Force Pinch to Zoom (override a website's request to disable Pinch to Zoom)

Re: Google were a convincing cover story for NSA

You're right - who knows.

I'd a thought that that under-sea fibre-tapping devices don't require such a large distraction, though.

Using a commercial company to provide cover for a a purpose-built espionage boat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer

formally the USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), the deep-sea drillship platform initially built for the United States Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division secret operation Project Azorian to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K-129, lost in April 1968.

Re: "Lack of hit games"

>If only they hadn't been so hostile towards third party publishers...

... or even been a bit quicker about releasing some titles from their own popular franchises.

Core functions?? My car's core function is to travel from A-B safely. Its GPS, remote locking system, alarm and horn etc are secondary functions at best.

Re: I'm curious...

Its a good way of doing this:

Strap: Always on, low power, waterproof, data logging of pedometer/heartbeat etc. Simple alerts.

Extra bit: More advanced functions, bigger display. Removed for charging, runnning, swimming etc. Will charge the smaller battery in the strap when in place.

Re: El Reg... Really?

At OP AC...

just because The Reg published the leaked details doesn't mean you have to read them. I haven't read the article*, but I've skipped to this comments section to get an idea of how spoilery the spoilers are. My choice, as your choice is yours.

*I know, I'm a hypocrite; I normally criticise commentards who comment on an article they haven't fully read.

It would seem that you *do* need to see who authored the article.... it wasn't Mr Hamill.

Re: Does it still collect data when...

>Does it still collect data when... ...you turn Location Services off? Turning it off is supposed to save battery life so it must be stopping something. I would like to know, because if it continues to leak data, then I'm not buying one.

Turning off location services on most devices will save power by not using the GPS chip, and possibly saving more power by not using the WiFi and cellular chips as much (since they are used to assist the satellite location).

Whether the device transmits this data to another party depends on the OS, the settings, apps installed, permissions, presence of malware etc