Posts by Vladimir Nicolici 30 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2008
Yeah, the CPU is not actually the issue, what the article fails to mention is that the actual problems are with the integrated GPUs.
Those Atoms come with integrated PowerVR GPUs, and their drivers suck. BTW, good luck using Linux with those GPUs.
And unfortunately, with the Creators update, where the OS started to do more advanced graphical stuff in the UI, those driver issues surfaced, resulting in various glitches and visual artifacts.
Having two buttons doesn't mean a single person can't operate them. You can place the two buttons close enough for that. But it ensures the person operating them really knows what it's doing, and it's not randomly pressing buttons.
Of course, if the purpose of having such buttons is to allow even untrained people to shut everything down in case of emergency, it would complicate things. But a large warning message, for example "In case of fire, you need to press these two buttons at the same time!" should take care of that as well.
I think the best solution to prevent accidental use is to have 2 big red buttons. And to require both to be simultaneously pushed to trigger the power shutdown.
In fact I saw a UPS product having exactly that feature, two EPO buttons that you needed to push simultaneously to shut it down.
I have the misfortune to use a phone with an 810 processor.
During the summer the phone overheats when I shoot video, causing it to stop recording until it cools down.
During the winter, also when shooting video, the phone draws so much power that it shuts down even with a full battery, because the battery can't provide enough power when it's cold outside.
Not sure how they convinced the phone OEMs to use that piece of crap in their flagships.
>>"Being disagreed with online [...] debated [...] corrected [...] is not harassment."
> She never said it was.
Actually, SJWs consider repeated criticism and questioning harassment. They even invented a term for it "sea lioning". And Anita even complained about that in front of the UN, saying that repeated comments by various users like "you suck" or "you are a liar" are a form of harassment.
In any case, even if we agree that "you suck" and "you are a liar" is harassment and not criticism, I don't see what anything has to do with misogyny. I watch YouTube videos on controversial topics made by male content creators, and I see similar levels of "abuse". On some very controversial topics they even receive death threats.
Controversial issues cause heated arguments. News at 11. So, nothing too see here. Move along. Unless you want to raise the "think of the women" rhetorical argument. In which case you are a bigot.
I almost always keep my car on the brakes. Reduces the risk of being hit from behind by people not realizing you are stopped. Yes, if I know I will be stopped for more than 2 minutes I may use the parking brake, after another car stops behind me.
Depending on visibility, when I'm the last car stopped in a column of cars, I may even turn on my fog light and my blinkers if I estimate the cars behind me might be surprised that I'm stopped there.
As an additional advantage, holding the brake provides a clue to the one behind you that you are about to move when you release the brake, and people reacting more quickly means more cars will be able to cross the junction during the green light.
And if you are dazzled by brake lights you may want to consult an eye doctor. If your eyes are so tired, you may need glasses, or you have been driving for too long, which is a safety issue in itself.
You are joking, but this is just what Renault is doing.
I used a Clio company car, and it had a remaining distance estimation, but as soon as it reached a range under 100km that estimation went away.
Probably to stop customer complaints like "it showed it had 10km remaining and it ran out of gas in 5 km", not realizing that it's an estimation, not a guarantee.
That said, I've driven my Skoda showing 0km remaining 10-15 additional km a few times, and so far I've been lucky not to run out of gas doing that.
I hated the Renault Clio for hiding that estimation and, even though I don't have a Mac, I hate Apple for doing this.
"It's now widely admitted that global warming, as measured by temperatures around the world, stopped at the turn of the century."
Stopped reading after seeing that crap. Then went to the NASA website to take the raw data and charted it myself. The result:
http://i.imgur.com/I0ypX49.png
The dotted line is a 10 year moving average. The chart units are 0.01 degrees Celsius. I charted the January-December annual mean.
Source data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt
Sorry lying author, the data contradicts you. Can "The Register" please fire that guy for writing lies? K. Thanks. Bye.
"Could Microsoft one day come up with a version of HoloLens that extends the hologram window to reach the wearer's peripheral vision, so that there isn't such a stark separation between the hologram world and the real one? Maybe. But it hasn't yet, so don't be fooled."
It clearly could, since you forgot to write in the article that the previous prototype demoed to the press 90 days ago had a larger field of view.
In my opinion there are a few possible reasons for the smaller FOV in the current prototype:
- The processing power of this unit is not enough for a larger FOV (the previous prototype was attached to a separate computer and external power).
- Some component of the projection system would be too expensive with a larger FOV.
- They are afraid to make it too immersive, so it doesn't make people sick after prolonged use.
If the issues are technical they would seem to be solvable by either waiting for Moore's law to give more powerful processors, or by waiting for the tech to become less expensive.
If it's a matter of "let's not get people sick", I hope they make the FOV configurable.
"A climate scientist wants a job and the only funded jobs are those who research proposals show that the intention is to try to prove or otherwise support the IPCC/UNFCCC claims."
Very cute. Even assuming that was true, what's stopping the scientist from concluding at the end of the study "my research doesn't prove or otherwise support the IPCC/UNFCCC claims"? The funding is already used at that point, so there's no reason to lie.
I'll tell you what stops him/her. The lack of evidence for the denier point of view.
In fact, climate research was funded by the Koch brothers, in an attempt to prove their denier claims. Can you guess what happened? Surprise! The study concluded the temperature increases are real and have no other explanation than the CO2 emissions caused by humans.
So no, the issue is not the funding. The issue is all the evidence points against the denier claims.
Furthermore, scientists love to prove other scientists wrong. See this video showing how happy this scientist is after recently finishing a study proving that chemists were wrong for many decades about how alkaline metals interact with water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8
And a study proving the climate scientists are wrong and the deniers are right would earn you a Nobel price, so there's a lot to win by going against the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans.
The only pesky thing stopping you from doing it is lack of evidence, not your bullshit conspiracy theories.
Sorry for using "denier" instead of "skeptic" during the comment, but your use of "alarmists" makes that fair game.
Re: "That's why it's called a technical preview. It's not even a beta. It's buggy"
Yeah, right. That's what was said about the Windows 8 previews: "Don't worry, MS won't ship it like this, they'll fix it before RTM, why do you complain about an alpha/beta etc.".
Unfortunately the RTM for Windows 8 was only slightly better than the Windows 8 previews.
Hopefully this time they'll listen better to the user feedback, but after seeing the regressions from the latest build compared to the previous build, I'm very concerned that they'll release something that is worse than both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
And there's not much that much time to fix it, about 6 months according to the latest estimates.
One thing to note is that the only thing this bug does is to allow the executable to bypass the UAC prompt. An account without administrative permissions won't be affected, since it can't elevate anyway.
A workaround for this issue, until Microsoft releases a fix, is to change the UAC security from the default to "Always Notify".
No, dear denier. What it means is that the report is not concerned with finding a cause for the climate change, AGW or otherwise.
But since climate change is happening at an unprecedented rate, the report is listing the consequences and what could be done to mitigate it.
So, the code is as follows:
def climateChangeIsHappening = true
// def agwMainCauseOfRecentClimateChange = not important for this report
if (climateChangeIsHappening)
{
IPCC_Output(stuff);
}
The art of AGW deniers is to ignore that even if the climate change is not caused by humans, as they claim, we still have to deal with it.
You are a bit wrong. First of all, exit nodes communicate unencrypted only with the regular web. Accessing hidden services makes the communication encrypted end-to-end. And even for the regular web, you can use https to achieve the same result.
This will hide both the origin of the traffic and the content of the traffic from anyone listening. Depending on how many intermediate nodes there are between you and the exit node, it can be almost impossible for someone to trace you, under normal conditions.
However, if most of the entry, exit and intermediate nodes are owned by FBI/NSA etc., everything changes. And it seems they lease some cloud servers from time to time to do just that.
TL/DR: TOR is not secure when attacked by someone with a lot of resources.
Actually, this not a patent issue. HTC didn't just copy the technology. They actually used the same hardware component (the same microphone), that was based on a Nokia design:
See this picture showing the component:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/04/htcnokiainjunction.jpg
Nokia had an NDA with ST electronics about this component, and ST seems to have failed to follow the terms of the NDA.
Those are Nokia Lumia phone models. And the "little group" has only one OS version, Windows Phone 8.
I find a bit strange to see all the Nokia and Windows hate on this forum and the obvious anti-Microsoft bias of the authors (but I can't fault them for giving their readers what they want).
This is strange because Windows Phone has a larger market share in UK than in US (6.7% vs 4.1%), and I don't see such anti-MS/anti-Nokia articles on US tech sites. BTW, of those 6.7%, 5.6% are Nokia Lumia phones.
Also, the doubling of market share in one year (from 3.0% to 6.7% in UK), is hardly a reason to post tasteless stuff like "Smell of death putting them off, perhaps".
Yes, Nokia makes mistakes, one of them being not releasing the phones fast enough (in some countries the high-end models arrive about 6 months after the initial launch).
Yes, Microsoft makes mistakes, like not allowing the first generation devices to be upgraded to Windows 8.
But even with all those mistakes, the growth in market share is healthy. If the trend continues, by the end of this year Microsoft and Nokia could secure third place for smartphone OS and as a phone manufacturer. The other manufacturers, except Samsung and Apple, are only a few percent in front of Nokia, and dropping.
I'm a HTC Radar owner, and I will switch to a Lumia 920 at the end of my contract.
"surveys show *fear* of running out of juice is one of the key worries about having an EV int he first place"
That's why Renault will tow a car that has ran out of juice to the nearest charging station, for free. So at least with Renault, that's not an issue.
The main problem with electric cars, aside from fear, is that they are not cost effective. If the price is good most of us will learn to live with some of the other issues, like limited range and long charging time. But that's not the case.
For example Renault will rent you the battery, and the more kilometers you drive per year, the higher the rent will be. The electricity cost is neglijable, you might as well consider it free. But the cost for renting the battery is huge, so in the end the total cost of ownership will be the same, compared to a normal car. For example, if you drive 15000 miles/year, the battery rental cost will be 1000 pounds + VAT per year, if you rent the battery for 5 years.
In my country that renting cost is equivalent with a fossil fuel car with a fuel economy of about 5 liters/100km, if you consider the fuel cost to drive the same distance (15000 miles). Most small diesel cars have no trouble matching that, VW Polo diesel uses only 3.8 liters / 100 km.
And the car prices are similar to the fossil fuel versions only after you substract the government subsidies.
So, unless you really want one, or you bet on the fossil fuel prices doubling over the next few years, going electric is not a good deal in any way.
But at least we're almost there. And for those that say that big oil killed the electric car, they couldn't be more wrong. High prices killed the electric car. And good prices will bring it back to life.
See this for more details about Renault electric vehicles:
http://www.renault.co.uk/resources/PDF/brochures/ze_pg.pdf
Why is everyone complaining about the Lumia 800 "clown" colors?
It will also be available in black.
Or, as Gizmodo put it: "It's available in cyan, magenta, black, black, black, and black."
Even the picture from the Vodafone UK site shows the black version: http://www.vodafone.co.uk/brands/nokia/nokia-lumia-800/
"Apple's iOS will still be holding on to the top slot, accounting for 57.8 per cent of the tablets that ship in 2017. Android's share of tablet shipments will have grown to 33.4 per cent by then."
But Android tablets already have 27% in Q3 2011, and iOS is already down to 66.6% according to this article:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/10/21/android_and_apple_dominate_world_tablet_market_in_q3_2011/
If that is correct, the 33.4% market share will most likely be reached by Android tablets in Q4 this year, not in 2017.
Let's say you write some code. Then, you (or worse, somebody in same team) need to do something similar.
In my experience, the first temptation is not to make the existing code more reusable, by breaking it in components, and using only the required component, or by making it more abstract and parameterized.
The first temptation is to copy-paste a huge chunk of code, and then to modify it in a few places to make it compatible with the new requirements. Most often than not, this is what happens, especially with inexperienced programmers, that barely grasp the concepts of OOP.
And, for a short period, this strategy seems to work, and many young members of the team start to think that copy-paste is a good thing: you can do it fast, you don't affect the original piece of code, so the initial developer won't get mad for ruining his work, and you don't risk breaking other things.
But this will come back to haunt you when you need to fix a bug, only to find out that you need to fix it not only in one place, but in the 100 other places where it was copy-pasted.
Or when you need to do a major redesign of the application, for example to change the theme on a web site, only to find out that there are tenths of similar looking, but different CSS, JavaScript, and template files to modify. That is if you are lucky enough to find any templates at all, because who needs templates when you can copy-paste an existing page and customize it every time you create a new web page.
So, yes you have to think every time you write a piece of code, how likely is that later on someone will need to write something similar. And if you find it likely to happen more than 3 or 4 times in the next 3 years, then you might as well plan for that.
Make the code reusable in the first place. Break it in many small classes or templates. Break the methods / functions in many small methods or functions, instead of a god method, 2000 lines long. Document it, comment it, and make clear its purpose, and that you feel that it should be reused, and in what way.
Someone, possibly you, will thank you later for your foresight.
However if you feel that a piece of code will most likely never be reused, you should document that as well. Then you can allow yourself the luxury of not caring about code reuse, and write the code faster.
You should still not create 2000 line code monsters, because you will have to debug or modify that code at some point, and it will be hell. Furthermore, in my experience, breaking the code into many small pieces and giving each a name, will make the code self documenting, to the extent that you will seldom need to comment the code.
And later on, if you are proved wrong and that code will need to be reused, it will be easier to reorganize the small pieces for reuse purposes.
And for god's sake, don't copy-paste. Or if you really have to, because the deadline is yesterday, document the copy-paste in both the source and the destination, and plan to refactor both code sections to something reusable as soon as possible.
Oh well, this comment is already to long. I should probably break it into multiple smaller, reusable comments :)
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