Posts by poopypants

Language?

Seems to me like this thing translates hieroglyphics into a set of calls to an eclectic mountain of run time libraries, none of which are open to public inspection.

It would be interesting to see how many machine instructions result from a request to shift the bits in a variable left by one. My C compiler generates a single machine code instruction. I know that because the compiler will helpfully generate a mixed C/assembly language listing if i ask for it.

Sorry, but Wolfram Language requires more trust than I have available to give.

Perspective

"The winner of this quarter is Microsoft which grew 123 percent."

That's one way of looking at it.

Another way of looking at it is to say their smartphone market share has increased to 3.6% globally.

Somewhat less impressive.

Not for consoles

Being so close to the face requires at a minimum dual 1080p displays. Avoiding motion sickness requires at least 60 fps. Those are currently high end PC gaming rig characteristics, and rules out consoles for the next 7-10 years.

Sill no movie rental

so thanks, but no thanks.

I know it is not easy when provoked

...but can we please try not to behave like children?

Thank you.

I have noticed this

Sometimes the mouse cursor pauses for a moment, then catches up in slow motion before returning to normal. Also the keyboard sometimes randomly auto repeats a character. This makes playing games like Battlefield 4 even more interesting, when added to the random sound distortions, "rubber banding" and crashes already provided by DICE/FROSTBITE.

Fun times.

For some reason

this story reminded me of Fisto, one of the robots in Fallout New Vegas.

There's always Adelaide

City of churches and disturbing sex crimes - and better than average civil liberties.

It's a bit boring though (apart from the sex crimes).

It's not that complicated

The NBN as implemented by the previous government was going to cost a lot more money than the current government considers prudent. They will therefore go with the cheapest solution that provides what they consider to be an acceptable result. Most people will be happy because the Turnbull NBN will let them stream Netflix at 1080p, but a lot of antipodean Reg readers will weep at the perceived injustice of it all, because it won't support 4K TV.

Neither PS4 nor XBox One are state of the art

Neither has a hope in hell of ever rendering games at native 4K resolution. The XBox One in particular is rendering Battlefield 4 at 720p, while the PS4 is rendering the same game at 900p. The result in both cases is then upscaled to 1080p.

In fact, the only current setup that has been shown able to comfortably render games at 4K and a steady 60 fps is a PC with dual NVIDIA Titans installed. (The new top of the range card from AMD should also manage.)

As for the "massive" 300 MB download - most of the games in my steam account have sizes measured in Gigabytes. All were downloaded.

How dare they

offer everyone free software and services. Must be some kind of commie plot.

Interesting psychology

The outrageously high price instantly identifies the wearer as someone who has a substantial disposable income. Making them obtainable by invitation only will of course serve to increase their desirability. People often want things that they cannot have - simply because they can't have them. Once the mindset is established that wearing Google Glass establishes membership of an exclusive elite*, Google will have to beat off the unwashed masses with a stick.

*See also Apple marketing strategy.

Finger painters

OPINION:

This is what happens when you dumb down your software to cater to tablet loving finger painters.

Both MS and Apple seem to be regressing to kindergarten style interfaces, which although pretty and distracting are not very productive.

Logie Baird

Logie Baird's television used a rotating Nipkow disk, through which a modulated flashing light was shown.

A pneumatically activated mechanical shutter placed in front of the light source might be the only variation required on his original design.

If the coalition do anything

then they would most likely increase the relevance of coursework to industry. That would be in keeping with their philosophical bias. Coincidentally, that would probably be the best outcome for students.

That's nice

They should put it in a technology museum so that it isn't entirely forgotten.

Old school assembly language programmer

; Swap registers R1, R2

R1 XOR R2

R2 XOR R1

R1 XOR R2

Perspective

Apple is more profitable than companies that sell Android devices.

- Apple products are overpriced.

Apple phones are not made of crap plastic.

- Apple phones come with a Faraday cage to reduced signal strength.

Apple devices are fashionable.

- Apple purchasers are not critical thinkers.

etc...

Missed opportunity

Instead of "Go Glass..." they should have used "Go Go Gadget...".

Impressive

ISON's green glow may be due to the presence of carbon molecules (click to enlarge...

I knew technology was improving in leaps and bounds, but this is an incredible breakthrough!

I was going to comment

but I decided not to.

Oh wait...

There's plenty of natural gas in Australia

In 2012 China purchased A$51 billion worth of iron ore, coal, and gold from Australia.

Perhaps they should be buying less coal and more natural gas.

HTC make nice phones (sometimes)

However I think the Nexus line provides better value.