Re: How about a better frame rate?
> I believe just doubling the frame rate would increase much more the quality of movies…
I suspect hiring a script writer would probably have a more meaningful effect...
Vic.
5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
The trick is using a piece of equipment that has only just become available in the last year, and in a way the manufacturers never intended combined with some very ingenious coding and hardware to exploit quantum entanglement within the system.
You mean a really *hot* cup of tea?
Vic.
> Trying to scale down the D-E train tech down to a car's frame seems to reduce its power too much
Porsche was making a petrol-electric car with hubcap motors in the first few years of the 20th century...
Vic.
> Fresnel concentrators are embossed plastic.
My old XMs had plastic fresnel lenses in the headlamps to achieve the then-mandated beam cutoff.
They're absolutely excellent - for about 3 years, then the plastic becomes increasingly opaque.
At 10 years, they're essentially useless :-(
Vic.
> If you believe that there ARE any bad guys out there
There are many, many bad guys out there.
I imagine that, without exception, they all consider themselves to be the Good Guys(tm).
And I suspect that the vast majority are government-funded.
Vic.
Furthermore, unlike with the USA, there has been no worldwide revelation that the Chinese government have backdoors into IT infrastructure - speculation, yes plenty, but as with most comments of this nature, that's all it is isn't?
Moreover, the speculation came form those who turned out to be doing everything they accused the Chinese of doing and then some...
Vic.
> At least the NSA won't have their massive trove of data hacked.
[ Citation Needed ]
The US is, to date, the the country whose security service had a whole buncjh of allegedly-sensitive[1] data leaked...
Vic.
[1] I have something of a suspicion that the value of the data is probably being over-hyped to attempt to demonise Snowden...
> getting from 99.8% to 100% is very hard
It's actually impossible.
The problem is that there is no concensus on what spam *is*. This is made worse by the awful half-arsed legislation we've had over the years, but when all is said and done, if you got 100 people in a room and gave them a spectrum of spam->ham mails, you would not get an identical categorisation for each one.
Additionally, as wel all know, brick-wall filters take an infinite amount of time to run. So even if you could come up with a "perfect" definition, you'd never actually get to see any mail.
There is one -and only one - solution to spam, and that is the Boulder Pledge[1]. But that's a very long-term proposition.
Vic.
[1] http://patriot.net/~shmuel/BoulderPledge.html
> Customer satisfaction and loyalty is not worth much in open ecosystem
It most certainly is.
I used to work for Sony[1]. We got glowing reviews for some of our products despite the fact that they were functionally *identical* to our competitors' (and had to be to get through customer testing). They actiually used almost exactly the same code as our competitors' units as well, seeing as that was supplied by third parties. It was an integration job, so there was little Sony code in the box.
But brand loyalty paid off, and out units sold like hot cakes, despite the premium price charged for them.
Vic.
[1] Sorry, sorry, sorry. I left when I discovered what utter bastards they had become...
> that looks like roughly the same process for pretty much everyone.
Yep. The only big difference I see between that and STB development (which I did for many years) is that the code tends to be available as source for Android, as opposed to an opaque blob for most intergration jobs.
> This looks like a lame excuse to me
I was thinking exactly the same. I'd put money on it that what *really* prevents releases being ported to older hardware is some PHB deciding that it won't make them enough money this quarter.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, a big part of retaining your customer base is being seen to be supportive of your existing users. So the short-term gain of abandoning a device is almost certainly outweighed by the long-term loss of customers pissed off at nopt getting the support they expected.
Vic.
Alan Turing's achievements in the field of computing and his service to his country should be applauded and upheld as both an example of intellect and how homosexuality should not be seen as a barrier to either loyalty or ability, but twisting the tale into gay propaganda is not going to do anyone any favours.
My god. A Matt Bryant post I agree with.
Have an upvote. I need a little lie down...
Vic.
> Now what about an apology and pardon for all the others?
That rather misses the point about what a pardon is...
A pardon doesn't say that the law was improperly applied, nor does it say that the law was wrong (although in this case, I'm pretty sure most of us agree it was).
A pardon says that someone is excused his transgressance of the law because of other acts he has performed. This pardon doesn't say that Turing didn't commit what was, at the time, a criminal act - it says that the country is prepared to overlook that act on account of all the good stuff he did.
Those others convicted of the same crime are thus not automatically eligible for pardon, even after the law in question has been repealed; there would have to be some sort of campaign to have their convictions annulled. That's a different matter entirely...
Vic.
I'm sick to death of being personally judged based on (generally) Europeans' experience of the far right 10% of our population. I don't judge France based on National Front members, or the UK based on BNP and UKIP members
The problem you've got is that the National Front / BNP / UKIP aren't in any sort of power. The far-right 10% of Americans we all object to is the bunch with the de facto power, even if not the de jure power...
Vic.
> There are myriad others such as "self serving" , "corrupt"
When I was in Sardinia, some years ago, corruption was pervasive. If you wanted anything to happen, you knew who to pay, and what it would cost.
The thing is, it was actually cheaper and more effective than it was back home. Getting things to happen was comparatively easy...
Vic.
> 1 pint = 2 units (fairly mild stuff)
Very mild stuff. That's for 3.5% ABV beer, which is less than most stuff available these days.
Most beers you see these days are between 2.5 and 4 units per pint.
I've got some Gouden Carolus for Chrimbly which comes in at 6 units per pint. And it's gorgeous :-)
Vic.
> Was I the only one that used the Sinclair Cambridge programmable calculator.
Nope. I had one, and so did quite a few of my mates.
Debenhams, of all places, was knocking them out at £7[1] a go...
Vic.
[1] I'm quite shocked I can remember that all these years later...
> Then the later ones using a small CD
I've still got one.
The CD drive lets it down - very slow to store photos - and the 5MP array isn't much to shout about, but the lens[1] on the front is fantastic, so the resulting shots are often much better than supposedly "better" cameras.
We've go an A0 shot of an elephant on the wall (my missus took it in India). It looks excellent...
Vic.
[1] It's a Zeiss, and it's a very nice piece of glass, that.