Posts by Dave 126

Re: Paying a lot for that light weight

No worries! You can also get an MHL-HDMI adaptor for less than a tenner.

Not only that, but I believe the Tablet Z also has native support for Sony's PS3 DualShock controllers.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2310604

Re: Paying a lot for that light weight

It connects to TVs by means of MHL through the microUSB port, which is actually a better solution than microHDMI because the TV supplies power to the tablet at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link

Re: Almost had me!

I would have though the low battery life is less of an issue for a sofa-bound tablet than it is for an out-and-about tablet.

Re: using it in the bath ... probably wouldn’t figure in my usage regime

Waterproofing is handy for those who use their tablet in the kitchen to view recipes (or use the multiple count-down timers).

>And wasn't the orginal MSG released on the MSX?

Mono Sodium Glutamate? Don't worry, we know you meant MGS! :) Metal Gear, and Metal Gear II: Solid Snake were on MSX-2, Metal Gear Solid was on Playstation.

Re: Iran

Mornington Crescent!

Re: I just listened to BBC R4 The MeeJah Show

I didn't take the conclusion of the Media Show as Snowden's leaks being too technical... a conclusion isn't their style. Curious that all the media attention is focused on the fate of a single man, as opposed to looking at the implications of what he leaked.

Probably the reason that the reaction to Snowden's leaked info hasn't raised too many eyebrows is that most people kinda suspected it was all going on anyway.

The response given in the case Arkell Vs Pressdam was when Private actually had evidence, as opposed to hearsay... normally they are happy to publish and be damned. There is a good tradition of 'Eye-told-you-so, as they are often vindicated years or decades after being successfully sued. l Vs Pressdam was when Private actually had evidence, as opposed to hearsay... normally they are happy to publish and be damned. There is a good tradition of 'Eye-told-you-so, as they are often vindicated years or decades after being successfully sued.

>"A the poor lil traitor "

Traitor to whom? His country-folk, or his state? Just how the hell does democracy have any legitimacy if the electorate do not have access to the facts? See "engineered consent" FFS.

Re: Airspace

>despite the fact that France itself had been the target of terrorism directed by the Gaddafi government in Libya.

Whatever. Too much smoke to tell. http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&article=122

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/hes_behind_you

"HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT

TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD

"Things come and go in the news cycle like waves of fever. A year ago Colonel Gaddafi was killed and an avalanche of camera phone footage of his last minutes was played again and again on the news channels. Then it stopped - and Gaddafi disappeared off into the dark.

"What remains is all the footage recording Gaddafi's forty year career as a global weirdo. But the closer you look at the footage and what lies behind it - you begin to discover an odd story that casts a rather unflattering light on many of the elites in both the British and American establishments."

>How about a tunnel through the centre of the Earth instead?.

Repeat to yourself: 'I shall watch not remakes of classic Paul Verhoven films.' [Total Recall]

Re: Fly east?

> attracting attention, which may be the point of all this stupidity.

Quite. Whilst a cat and mouse game is fun and all, fewer people are taking notice of the import of what he leaked. How's Bradley getting, anyhows?

Re: I sort of agree.

>I've got no idea what that killer app might be, sadly.

How 'killer' that application needs to be (the benefit) depends upon the cost (retail price, appearance, battery life etc) of implementing it.

There are quite a few very useful things a 'connected' watch can do, without even having to boast a pixel-based display. Examples are 'Find my phone', 'warn me when my phone loses contact', 'mute my phone/reject call', ''pause music / skip track'.

Information that can be communicated to the user by means of just a watch hand include: direction of travel, speed, various notifications, minutes to next train etc.

My preference would be for simple 'connected' features included in a conventional, good looking watch.

Re: Work in progress

>I have no problem with the concept of wearable tech and I'm sure in time it will get to the point where it's actually stylish and functional, at which point it will become ubiquitous.

Terry - take a look at the Citizen Bluetooth watch. It resembles many other 'chronometer' watches.

It doesn't have a alpha-numeric display, but uses vibration and then the second-hand to indicate what message has come to the phone. One could imagine a more advanced version that uses the second-hand to guide the wearer towards GPS waypoints, for example.

http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/02/citizen-eco-drive-proximity/

Apparently it has similar disconnection issues to the first Sony smartwatch, though.

The latest Android update bought in Bluetooth Low Energy support - though only a handful of Android handsets have the hardware at the moment - bringing it in line with iOS and Win Pho 8.

Re: Will the 'Xbox 180' and 'PS4' be the greatest gaming experience ever?

>For starters I can't understand why the GTA team didn't try a new theatre i.e. an Italian, French or Asian inspired open world, instead its west coast CA yet again!

I for one always wanted a sci-fi style GTA... stealing futuristic vehicles like the racing craft found in WipeOut, or some Mechs.

>Unfortunately a lot of Indie developers are being forced to go small screen to stay in business, helped by the crushing Hollywood system.

Many developers - including people like John D. Carmack of iD Software - are welcoming the ability of indie developers to create games without having a budget of $millions. There seem to be plenty of 'AAA' titles available for consoles, despite a rise in 'casual gaming' - be it tablets or Nintendos.

@Peter Johnston 1

Apologies: judging from article text quoted in another comment, it would appear that the article was corrected in between your comment and my reading it.

>The Nexus 4 is much cheaper - not dearer - than the Sony

Forgive me if a correction has been made to the article since your comment, but I read " but the former [The Xperia Z] is more than ₤200 ($US308, $AU334) more expensive than Google's offering." to mean the Sony was more expensive than the Google Nexus 4.

The article was just reporting tests made by Which? magazine using a certain benchmark... as people have observed, there are other factors that affect how the phone performs in the real world. Which normally do recommend Apple products over competitors, mainly because their readership is looking for tech reviews in a monthly magazine and not on a tech website. Anandtech would tell you that the iPhone5 rules 'Sunspider' tests (something to do with its cache, apparently), but I don't know how that affects real-world use.

I haven't seen The Hobbit at 48 fps, but I have noticed strobing in the cinema in most of the big action 'event' movies of the last ten years... especially in big action tracking shots, such as in Star Wars III.

Ridley Scott seemed to have embraced the strobing in the opening battle scene of Gladiator, to give the viewer an impression of how the participants in the battle might feel disorientated.

Good article.

Why has Scott Green been downvoted for merely pointing out that this game is not a First-Person Shooter but a Third Person title that doesn't reward out-and-out gun-play in all situations?

Re: RFID?

RFID-tag under the skin (like my dog). There's a YouTube video of someone who has done this, and built a lock-box for their handgun... the idea is that they have instant access to a weapon, but their kids don't.

I rather like the idea of a ring or watch with RFID- any handset or tablet you pick up becomes 'yours', with your contacts, mail, documents etc. (obviously the security aspect needs further thought...)

Re: Phone, Face Time and Message blocking.

That's fine, but in the UK unsolicited sales calls are more often than not made from different numbers.

(though I have created a contact called 'Z Spam' of previous junk numbers and instructed my Android handset to send them straight to voicemail... Hmmm, must look into finding a compiled blacklist of numbers on-line, and adding that, too).

I iliked this, from Private Eye:

Last week Independent hack Tom Peck struck a blow for over-informed journalists everywhere when he finally snapped and sent a reply to the 9994th email from a PR pushing a product and claiming “I hope this news story brightens up your Wednesday!”

Was he congratulated by grateful colleagues for this constructive feedback? Was he heck. When the PR company in question complained to Indy editor Chris Blackhurst, Peck was hauled into the editor’s office, bollocked, and ordered to write an apology.

Re: No surprise there

>Sure these facts need to be confirmed by other testers but it's not like it's a real surprise.

>Anandtech came to basically the same conclusions a few monthes ago.

Thank you Sil, I'm glad someone has been paying attention to recent developments. "ARM is more power efficient" has become near dogma, when the reality is actually more interesting. Another bench-mark heavy site, Tomshardware, has been looking at this too.

I don't care what my next phone is built around, and I'm not saying Go Intel: I'm saying lets have more data.

Re: Intel sponsored "research"?

>Total energy to complete a given task is what matters.

That is the methodology that Intel have been pushing:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-z2760-power-consumption-arm,3387-5.html

Re: What about standby power consumption?

> If you're gaming all day or playing video it's going to be important but the screen is still likely to top power use.

This Atom uses Power VR-designed graphics like many of its ARM competitors, so playing video might not be the area the biggest differences are seen.

Re: first AMD now Intel

>How did they measure the results? Internal phone "power draw" measurement as used in Android for the "what is using my battery" stats? That is waaaaaaay buggy and off.

>I will believe this once I see the battery taken out, current meter inserted, the current measured and recorded.

You want multimeter readings? From six months ago:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-z2760-power-consumption-arm,3387-5.html

"...tore down tablets and identified critical points where microsoldering leads to a fancy version of a Fluke multimeter yields power consumption data for specific SoC and platform subsystems.

"I encourage you to do to the same arithmetic we just did when it comes time to comparing platforms. In the meantime, seeing how Intel does its power consumption measurements by soldering wires under a stereo microscope has given me an idea."