Posts by Pascal Monett 19056 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
YES ! That !
Absolutely. That would have been awesome.
Maybe in another 75 years, when MPAA is bankrupt and forgotten along with its copyrights, and when technology has given us artificial voice simulators and CGI has lept forward in power, we will get a proper Thrawn trilogy with the original cast all in well-done CGI without (too many) lens flares.
And maybe I'll win the lottery this week.
Fringe was brilliant. Brilliant character development, and a relations story that actually brought something to the series and was not just tacked on as an afterthought once a thousand bored housewives had sent a petition to have some smooching (like in Bones, Castle, House, FBI Missing Persons, and just about all the others).
Abrams has his name on Fringe ? I'm surprised, but I will accept it as the one good thing he did.
Except for Season 5, that is. That season doesn't exist.
I'm rather surprised that Microsoft bases its business model on everyone having 100Mbps connections whereas most people in the US barely have 2Mpbs.
Sure, in Taiwan they have 100Mbps (or so I heard), but for most other people in the world, the Cloud is just a slow remote drive that is not always there. And not secure. And not under your control.
So yeah, what's not to like ?
Three people do not make a valid representative sample.
Windows 8 has changed a lot more than just the Start menu. It has also attempted to lock users into a walled garden, among other issues.
But I do not expect someone happy with a Playskool UI to be knowledgeable about issues. Go back to clicking your shiny tiles. I'm glad you're happy with it.
If I judge by the content of this article, if you're catching an object reflexively you are still using your brain because you need to know where the object is, thus you have to use your view and correlate with the reflexive action.
The kind of reflex you refer to is the bump on the knee thing. That does not go to the brain and if you end up kicking someone it has nothing to do with aim.
It is high time aircraft have some collision-detection hardware installed. With a local radio network, each aircraft could automatically identify itself to all the others in the local zone and they would all "negotiate" their passage.
That should take the brunt of the work off the traffic controllers, who would then "just" be monitoring the state of affairs and intervening when necessary to avoid a cock-up.
Just dreaming here, may not be practical.
"There may be _HOURS_ before the flight plan is punched in and the actual time it needs to be executed."
Um, I don't think this is about flight plan stuff _before_ take-off. This is about controlling that the craft is not going to crash into anything else right now.
I agree that pre-flight flight plan control could very well be farmed out to a mainframe that would happily control its validity without resorting to real-time constraints. But when you have a hundred flights over your head at that instant and need to integrate a new object and control its parameters, you need the result straight away, not in ten minutes.
Plus, I believe that flight control has a tendency of reassigning altitudes to ensure that collisions do not occur - that is not something that a pre-flight check can take into account.
Climate modellers are also dealing with the single most complex field of science : thermodynamics. And they are trying to create a model that not only deals with that science, but does it on a planet-wide scale.
I have no beef against scientists, their job is one of the most demanding and unrewarding that can be. What I disagree with is the gravy train that has sprouted up around the existing flawed models, and what I am incensed by is the so-called scientists that are guilty of massaging the data to fit the conclusion that lays the tracks for said gravy train.
No one with a brain can deny climate change. It's happening all the time. What I can deny is the need to go Chicken Little about it and approve throwing gobs of money at ill-conceived schemes that 1) are not renewable, 2) do not actually have results compatible with being eco-friendly and 3) give their greatest benefit only to the people that are actively involved in the scheme.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, will ever convince me that my household appliances have any need of being "connected".
A coffee maker is to make coffee, not listen to the radio. For that, I have a radio.
Actually, I'll make it really simple : now that we have tablets that are readable and can connect to them thar intarwebs, there is no good reason to connect anything else.
The best appliance is a dumb appliance.
Because the rights holders will sue to the ground anyone who streams stuff without their prior permission. They do that because they have the mistaken impression of living in a world where they decide what is on offer, thus "managing availability", and where it is on offer.
Unfortunately for rights holders, the Internet means two things : firstly, everything is available everywhere as soon as it is posted, and secondly, whatever is available now will be available forever. If rights holders attempt to limit content availability or accessibility, they are attempting to artificially limit content access and the Internet is bloody good at routing around artificial limitations.
That is why the content majors have not set up their own portals - they do not want to take the brunt of the backlash they will be getting if they set up shop on the Internet like they are used to doing on the street. That, in turn, explains why streaming services are continually short of content to stream - rights holders are handing out limited contracts with the same generosity as Scrooge before that fateful XMas night.
So let's make one thing clear : the only acceptable user experience is where the user logs on to a major's portal, finds the entire catalog available regardless of his worldly location, and clicks on what he wants to watch and starts watching. Anything less than that and piracy will continue because piracy is providing that experience.
So, Hollywood, RIAA, MPAA et al, you set that up for a price we're willing to pay and you will do away with piracy overnight. Guaranteed.
Server OS & Desktop OS = Windows.
Application business = Office
I said those two lines were the money makers, no contest there.
Developer Tools = free, so no money from that
As for Office 365, it's not doing as well as Microsoft wants it to, and Azure is not the rush either.
I will grant you Exchange, but it's still a dog to run, and Hyper-V is making some people happy, no doubt there.
But I don't see that Microsoft is making billions on those last two.
Bing was shit 5 years ago and it is still shit today. It'll probably still be shit 5 years from now. The fact that Bing gives you personally the results you need is irrelevant.
What is relevant ? Investments. Like this. And this. Google has been investing billions in datacenters for years now.
That is why we are seeing this kind of news. And this. Microsoft is playing catch-up, because Microsoft has decades to catch up with.
Even Facebook is getting into the act.
I don't know how much money Google has put into its worldwide datacentre architecture, but I do believe that, until Microsoft has at least equalled that amount, Bing will remain a 2nd-rate search service. Which is not to say that it can't be useful before that time.
But right now, Bing is shit.
Microsoft has screwed up every major project for the past two decades.
The only thing that has kept Microsoft afloat is the fact that Windows+Office is everywhere and is the default choice. That tag team has made Microsoft its billions, nothing else.
And that is why Microsoft is desperate to get people to use Office365, because it knows that the future is going to see PCs relegated to developer/content creator tools. The masses have already ditched the PC for tablets, iPads and smartphones. Windows is going to lose the mass market, and that plus the no more Office licenses is going to put a serious dent in Microsoft's revenues. Maybe businesses will keep PCs for office drones, but the PC of 2050 will probably not be a tower. And this Bring Your Own nonsense is not helping Microsoft either.
So Microsoft is going to have to get its web services into top shape if it wants to survive. As usual though, it is pretty much screwing that up bit by bit as well.
But fear not, fanbois, Microsoft has plenty of cash to see itself through these difficult times. It will be able to screw up Windows 9, 10, 11 and all the way up to 25 if it wants before really getting into trouble.
Because it will screw up. It is much too used to having things work its way.
Who is this Palmer Luckey they mention ?
In any case, if all the source code is available on the Web, I think this is going to be pretty much an open-and-shut case.
And apparently Zenimax is in good standing to lose, because you don't publish code online that contains unlicensed IP. That would be a suicide note.
That's nice to know. Could someone please tell me how to get it ?
I would appreciate something more specific than just "go to the Danish geo site and download it there", because I went to the site and can't, for the life of me, find out how to get the download.
Yes, I found the interactive map where they show you the 10km2 chunks to choose from, but after that ? Is there any easier way ? Torrent link maybe ?
Any info is welcome.
Let me reassure you : Google is simply becoming as bad as Microsoft, in its journey to become worse than Microsoft.
The only reason Microsoft is where it is is because before smartphones, there was only the PC for getting mail and going to the Web.
Now there is phones and phablets and the PC is going back to being used only by content creators and professionals, so Microsoft is on its way out and Google is taking its place.
The king is dead, long live the king !
I have a Galaxy SII just like my daughter. The difference is that mine is tied to a different operator.
My phone is running 4.1.2, hers is still on 2.x something. Mine has had a system update twice in two years, hers has had none.
"The handhelds must run Google's flavour of Android – the open-source-ish OS it bought in 2005 – rather than customised, bloatware-ridden versions cooked up by some hardware makers."
That in itself is going to be the beginning of the end for customized versions. Everyone knows about the latest functions made available in the latest version of Android. Most people look at their phone and can only dream about the day it will finally trickle down to them. It is nothing short of infuriating to know that your hardware CAN support it, but it's your operator that is not.
Operators are not going to get any pity on this front. Not that they get much anyways. They've been milking us for long enough.
Not sure you evan have to go that far in Clause 2 : except such as is in accordance with the law
Make a law that torture is legal part of the judicial system and the only complaint you can have is that it is immoral. Same here. They did it with the NSA, what makes you think they'll have the slightest compunction to not do it for this ?
Cue ominous music and cloaked figure saying "I will make it legal".
“the department believes that if a person has downloaded or saved the report, they can still access the personal information”
No really ? And how many meetings did it take for them to realize that ? Did they have to go to the nearest Helldesk drone to ask confirmation ?
Could somebody please visit them with a cluebat ? Made of iron, preferably.
I don't think they can, technically speaking.
We have games today that boast about how the terrain can be modified, but they lie. They look gorgeous, but the terrain "modifications" are small and temporary.
In Minecraft, every part of the world is a modifiable entity. It doesn't look so good, but technically it goes way beyond just having a hole in the ground.
The tradeoff is clear : you use memory for gorgeous graphics, or for actual functionality. Minecraft has decided to go for functionality.
That being said, you can easily find Minecraft mods that propose texture packs. Some of them make the game look quite better than the original textures. Still just as blocky, obviously, but the blocks look nice.
So, apart from being the next must-have status symbol for all Apple addicts, what does the thing do ?
Apparently, it "plays nice with your iPhone". Well that's a sales pitch that does not impress me. Besides, I have an Android phone.
It's a watch, so it will have minuscule screen space unless they go for the dork look (possible). For energy-saving reasons, I'll bet you'll have to press a button to activate said screen which means that, as a watch, it is less useful than its regular competitors. I sincerely hope Apple will not go and do the not-replaceable battery thing on this, but you never know. And what else will it have ? Blutooth probably, otherwise it won't play with anything. Sounds like dismal battery life in view.
And it's supposed to replace the Ipod, so that means earbud jacks going to your wrist. Or maybe Blutooth to your iPhone - except that we know that Apple does not like music collections that it does not control via iTunes. Sounds like a mess right there.
Yeah, I know, it's Apple. There might be a miracle and this thing might actually be useful.
I doubt it though.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
