Posts by Dave 126

Every new TV should include a small IR blaster - the size of a coin - with just one button: On/Off. This blaster will have an adhesive back so that it can be affixed to one's PVR/Satellite/Cable Box remote controller.

OR:

TVs have a 'wake on HDMI signal'.

The TV remote does little more than turn it on and off - the rest is done through the Humax PVR remote. The PVR remote can double as the TV remote, but the step of pushing [TV] [On] [PVR] [On] confuses and infuriates my dad.

[Off Topic: My mum is merely confused when watching the TV and it suddenly says 'Spotify' - a result of my dad in the next room selecting the wrong device from his phone ( I named the Chromecast Audio dongle in the kitchen 'Kitchen'... I don't know what else I can do). ]

>If I want to search for/look at a YouTube video when seated at the TV, I'd rather do it on the TV than go fire up some other device. So I'm rather annoyed at this development.

It sucks that something that did work now works no more. However, a Chromecast dongle - using as it does a phone, tablet or computer for text input - makes searching for Youtube videos so much easier than using a standard IR remote that I don't begrudge the extra power consumption. It also more than makes up for the time it takes for the Chromecast to boot up.

That said, our new Samsung TV presents itself as a Chromecast device, making Google's dongle redundant for the time being. The PlayStation 3 offers similar functionality from the Youtube app on an Android or iOS device.

Re: Another option (if you really want to stick with Windows)...

Hmm... it appears you can use Win7 in a VM without contravening the licence. What isn't allowed is using the same Win 7 licence for both the host OS and guest VM.

- http://superuser.com/questions/25678/how-does-windows-7-licensing-work-for-running-the-os-as-virtual-machines

- http://blog.superuser.com/2011/04/06/microsoft-licencing-transferring-windows-to-another-computer/

Re: Another option (if you really want to stick with Windows)...

>But the license doesn't allow that...

Does it not? Genuine question.

Re: Aliens

>Never understood why they removed the robot sentries (and Ripley's search for her daughter) from the original film.

Commonly cited reasons given for films in general are:

- Potential cinema audiences can be put off by films over a certain length

- Theatres want shorter films to allow more showings per day

- The pacing and rhythm of a film

These days, many DVD releases are longer than the Theatrical Cut without even advertising the fact - people are more comfortable on their own sofas with a Pause button for toilet breaks.

Pacing is more an art than a science - the 3 3/4 hour long Apocalypse Now Redux 'flows' better than the original, whilst Cameroon was right to remove a scene of a cocooned Burke from the third act of Aliens - just as Scott omitted a cocooned Dallas scene towards the end of Alien - because it just broke the momentum.

Re: Bunch of CNTs

>So why are they aiming at a couple of minor niche markets when they could seemingly take over the entire world's memory and storage markets?

Because some of the advantages of non-volatile RAM would be currently wasted in mass-market devices such as desktops and phones. One these devices are designed to take advantage of it, the market will grow and prices will drop - a virtuous circle. There's always been games of chicken and egg in IT! :)

>Speed increases will, doubtlessly, be noticeable but does this then move the bottleneck to the system bus and or HDD/SDD and how many years before the price makes this technology practical for us home users?

Good questions, for which clues to some answers can be found in the history of the tech we use today. Already you can buy mass storage that sits on your PCIe bus instead of your SATA.

Some advantages, such as an 'instantly wake from a non-power consuming sleep state' might require a tweak to the computers power management system and CPU. The lower power consumption is of greater benefit to embedded and mobile applications than to desktops, though.

In the mid term, a technology that is as fast as RAM and as non-volatile and capacious as a HDD will change how a desktop computer is designed fundamentally. That is, why have separate RAM and mass storage?

Whilst you might not consider yourself an expert, you know better than others where the bottlenecks already are in your system, in relation to the tasks you put it to.

Re: Given the commentary about weak/strong passwords at the end

RightStallionCellClip it is then! :)

Alt text:

or NotwrongMarePileFastener

re: ARM?

> Maybe they should have just gone for an ARM-based SOC instead of a custom thing with an Atom on the side, Windows 10 is supposed to be cross-platform after all.

Quite a few of the software partners are used to developing for x86:

http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-announces-long-list-hololens-partners-new-use-case-scenarios

Not sure why you suggest an ARM-based chip in place of this custom DSP - even phones use GPUs that aren't ARM-based.

Re: They might be painful to remember they exist

The recent Karl Urban one was very good, but we only saw a bit of MegaCity One - and other than him passing Anderson's probation, it was presented as being just another day for Dredd. A great shame that no sequels are planned, though Karl Urban is keen - even suggesting that he could do one in a decade or two, portraying different parts of Dredd's career.

The Stallone film, whilst blaspheming, is worth watching for the production design and more ambitious scope - we go to Cursed Earth, even if its poorly realised. Stallone has since apologised for not making the film as it should have been.

Still, we'll always have RoboCop (emotionless lawman in a satirised world), and Dirty Harry (Clint being an influence on Dredd)

Re: "Samuel Johnson had for women preachers"

>Just out of curiosity why didn't you use Muslims have for Women Imams instead of "Samuel Johnson had for women preachers", given there are Women Preachers and there's zero Female Muslim Imams.

Your curiosity didn't extend to clicking the link? The alternate analogy you provide wouldn't express the nuance of the author's views.

Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Re: Because most of the planet

>I can't tell whether you're joking. QNX as a mobile OS died with Blackberry's smartphone

And QNX lives on as it has for decades, battle tested, real time - and a tenth the size of Linux. Google are happy of there are devices around that inform them about their users, but those devices don't have to be phones.

Still, it'll probably save them headaches if they roll their own OS.

Re: How does using the Linux kernel prevent Google from distributing Android updates?

>The real reason they can't distribute updates quickly is because they let the OEMs customize it, thus they depend on the OEMs to port their changes onto new versions before they can be released.

Doug, you're forgetting a few stages, such as the chip set vendors creating binary blobs that are them passed onto the ODMs.

Re: Are we sinking into a kB/Kib-like mess?

>So when you buy a TV, you have to peer at the specs to find out if they are kilopixels or kibipixels? Stuff that.

Don't bother, just look for the UHD tag - that'll mean that it is 3,840 x 2,160 and that's all that most available content will take advantage of.

Then look at your viewing habits and environment - do you watch TV in a well lit room, or is it in a darkened cave for cinema-style film viewing? This has a bearing on which display technology will be most suitable.

After that, just make a decision about whether you want to spend extra for UHD Premium and/or Dolby Vision - these refer to the colour and dynamic range. Do note that the UHD term alone means that a TV will likely offer superior colours and dynamism than your older TV anyways.

Re: Dearth of content

The BBC are making Planet Earth II (narrated by David Attenborough) in UHD. It's due to be broadcast later this year, hopefully with a UHD BluRay to follow.

I know it's not David Lean, but like Lawrence it should have some spectacular scenery in it! :)

Re: Dave 126.

> Googling "IPS glow" should give you some pretty extreme illustrations.

I don't need to Google it, I've seen it! :D Very noticeable when watching 'letter-boxed' content (i.e a movie whose aspect ratio is different to that of my old LCD/LED screen. The 'black bars' at the top and bottom of my screen are not black, and can be easily seen against the background if the room's lights are turned off.

My friend's OLED TV is a different matter. You just cannot discern any letterboxing at all in a dark room - which is what you would expect. It really does make for a better film viewing experience, especially during darker scenes. He knew his viewing habits, weighed up the benefits against the cost and made decision.

However, read up on it - if you use your TV for watching football on a Saturday afternoon for example, you might be better served by the greater maximum brightness of a modern LED set.

Re: Dave 126.

>But how does it offer "greater dynamic range"? It is a TV with pre-recorded content, OLED and black is black, white is white. How can they "increase" that via the source data or by changing from 8bit to 10bit colour? They can't. ;)

How? Because UltraHD includes the Rec 2020 colour space specification, at either 10 bit or 12 bit per pixel. The specs cover the content, not just the final display output.

'White' is not the brightest. For a demonstration of a file having more information that the display device, just download a *.EXR or *.HDR image file, view them in PhotoShop (Gimp users need a fork called CinePaint) and play with the slider in the bottom left hand corner - it is akin to adjusting the exposure of a camera. Such files are used as environment maps in 3D raytracing, because light sources depicted in the images have their brightness defined by the extra bits per pixel - thus the rendered object will have highlights and shadows. To a lesser extent, many RAW files will also contain more information than most monitors can display.

If you reread my original post, you'll see that I said that UltraHD TVs have greater dynamic range, not '4K' TVs per se. That was very deliberate distinction, though of course most '4K' sets will soon conform to UHD (the first 4K sets were sold before the standards were finalised).

>The UHD/4K provides better resolution.

UHD is a set of standards that include resolution *and* colour space, including a greater dynamic range.

>The OLED provides better dynamic range. (Black has always been black, white has always been white, everything else is false advertising)

OLED does allow for proper black (each pixel is its own light source), but there are techniques that increase the dynamic range of LED sets (effectively 'local dimming'). LED sets still won't have the absolute black of OLED, but they have greater absolute brightness. This is accounted for by UHD standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_television#Color_space.2C_dynamic_range.2C_and_frame_rate

>TL:DR, the advertisers and marketers are very good at using the wrong words to describe real changes, and you seem to have fallen for it.

I'm not clear what you think I've fallen for. Your post suggests that you think UHD only covers resolution. The idea that 'black is black and white is white' applies to printed images but not necessarily to display devices (or for that matter, stained glass windows).

Re: quality..

>... not to mention the fact that the analogue vinyl recording format makes no provision for DRM

Well, vinyl wouldn't provide Digital Rights Management, hehe! The idea of 'vinyl Analogue RM' may have been around, but it never worked in practice - if it was ever implemented at all:

Copy-protection for vinyl in the 1970s

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2008/01/copy-protection-for-vinyl-in-t.php

Re: quality..

CDR? Get back to your cave, Mr Flintstone! :D

Re: Skeevy bastards

'4K' is only really a marketing term, but a useful one - the screen is almost 4,000 pixels wide, and the screens have nearly 4 times the resolution of 'HD' screens.

I can't really think of a better, easily grokkable term for them: 'SuperDuperUltraHD' or somesuch would only confuse consumers after the whole 'HD Ready / Full HD / i / p' kerfuffle.

UltraHD TVs can be very nice - not because of the extra pixels, but because of the greater dynamic range that is contained within the standard. A friend of mine recently bought an OLED 4K TV, which cost about 4 times more than a LCD/LED 4K TV... but the image is gorgeous.

Annoyingly, few 4K TVs have DisplayPort inputs, and few non-gaming graphics cards have HDMI 2.0 output yet. For sure, most 4K TVs can access 4K content by themselves (Netflix et al), but it would be nice to have a 4K computer display for pictures and the like.

Re: quality..

>a very poor audio mastering on CD can still be worse than a very good audio mastering on vinyl... ...lets not kid ourselves (or trick innocent people into believing that vinyl has some "mystical" and "warmer" sound - they might as well start investing in hand-braided interconnect cables and special speaker cabinet wax).

Indeed. Because of its inherent limitations, mastering on vinyl requires greater care - by a human being with ears. This can give some recordings a different sound on vinyl compared to CD, sometimes a sound that can be called 'warmer'. High fidelity? No, it is isn't. Better sounding than CD? Sometimes yes, though of course it is subjective - and largely a function of the mastering, not the medium.

Re: "90% mortality

> if nukes launched we'd have over 90% mortality in one year. The electrical grid would go down, and then it wouldn't be rebuild for a very, very long time.

At least we'd only need to rebuild it to 10% of today's capacity!

But seriously, for some grim, depressing viewing - though accurate - try 'Threads (1984)': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads

In its depiction of a nuclear winter, it makes post-apocalyptic films look like a walk in the park.

Re: ALIENS!

>Out of the untold trillions of stars out there, one flickers in a way we have not yet observed....So it must be a Dyson Sphere....HAH! As if! Get real.

You have so missed the point. Astronomers don't believe there is a Dyson Sphere, and they know that their colleagues don't believe so, either. Therefore, their use of the Dyson Sphere concept is just a fun way of signposting to their community that they have some interesting unexplained data on their hands.

Just to make things clear to you: Jocelyn Grace Bell didn't really believe that there were Little Green Men sending messages when she recorded the signals that lead to the discovery of pulsars, even though she joked that the alien buggers were sending signals purely to mess her PhD research up.

RAF technicians never really believed in Gremlins. It was a joke.

>Why building a huge super-structure around a star, at a distance safe enough to live for the foreseeable future, which is covered on the inside by energy-gathering whatevers, and has living space throughout is some "end game" goal for a civilisation, I can't fathom.

The end game is to waste as little available energy as possible, so as to allow the maximum amount of consciousness. As a sci-fi trope, the idea is speculation about factors that limit a population's continual growth.

Similarly, Iain M Bank's 'Orbitals' concept - a descendant of Niven's 'Ringworlds' but more modest in scale - is based around the idea of providing as much human-habitable area for as little matter as possible. Banks would be the first to admit that he was a fiction writer, so let's ignore the need for impossibly strong materials and radiation-shielding force-fields etc.

>Literally the scale is so vastly infeasible I don't get why it even gets mention in things like this.

Because scientists have a sense of humour. The Dyson Sphere concept can be safely used a placeholder, since no one will mistake it as a serious explanation (without extraordinary evidence). 'Tabby's Star' is also refereed to as the 'WTF? Star' (Where's the Flux?), which again signposts the researchers interest. Similarly, the signal that originally lead to the discovery of pulsars was jokingly known as LGM-1 - 'Little Green Men'.

Re: What are you; some sort of Common Sense Nazi?

>Why would anyone buy hardware or software that can be shutdown at the whim of a cloud provider?

>>Steady on old chap; are you calling the myriad delights of, say, the IoT or Smart Metering into question?

Why the hell are all these purveyors of gizmos (watches, thermostats, security cameras, MiFi cards etc) sending stuff to the cloud? Surely there is market opportunity for a domestic device - a low-power, always on server the user keeps at home - and supporting platform, that individual users can send the data their gadgets generate to? The vendors individual gadgets can write for this platform, and if the user desires they can mirror it on a cloud-based docker, one which only they control.

There doesn't seem to be any consumer need for their unencypted data to spaffed around tinternet. Or have I missed a few things?