Posts by Dave

Blu-ray brains create 3D taskforce

@Dave

I understand that you need slightly more components than just an extra lens... you need movement in the angle between the lenses- just as our eyes go crossed if we try to look at our noses. Also, the auto-focusing on the two lenses must be synched. This level of control is what has kept the price of 3D cameras up. It certainly adds up to more than the sum of two cameras.

All the big action directors of note (ie the ones from the eighties) Spielberg, Lucas, Cameroon and Jackson are excited by 3D filmaking- perhaps becuase it offers a night out that can't be replicated (pirated, shared etc) in a home environment.

Teens reject Microsoft's Zune

8ollock

What I want from an MP3 player is not available in any one unit I've seen:

Great sound quality

Drag n Drop Mass Storage Mode

Mass storage (30GBs plus)

Navigation by folder OR ID3 tag as the mood takes me

Huge audio codec support - I want to listen to what I want

Line In recording at hi-fi quality

On-the-fy playlists

Browser mode for reading and writing to removable storage such as USB sticks or SD cards

Ease and Speed of use (doesn't have to mean scroll-wheel, but it's a good solution)

Dedicated 'Music to make girls dance' shortcut button*. (* or a user-definable button for any other purpose)

Most of this was available many years ago on the iRiver H140 and 340 players, but not any more... Apple, Microsoft and Sony players ALL have their hardware crippled in some way (Sony and Apple both publish music, Miicrosoft are just cu_Microsoft.) C'mon Korea, you can sort me out! Or maybe Microsoft can uncripple the the upcoming final Zune and leave the game on a high?

Apple muffles PC noisemakers

Like a purrr

I've often thought that were the fans in my computer to sound like a purring cat, the noise would be less irritating. Maybe even relaxing.

It is not so much the level of noise that annoys me in computers, but the stopping and starting of it, sometimes clearly linked to an activity, sometimes seemingly randomn.

Battlestar Galactica eyes 'technology run amok'

to Winston Smith

Agreed, Dylan said of Hendrix's Watchtower "It's his song, all my songs are his".

It was a fun T.V show, enjoyed it immensly, glad it that summer is on the way, roll on the beer and the beer gardens, girls and dancefloors, frisbees and parks.

Philips GoGear Spark MP3 player

devil is in the details

Does it allow you to browse folders, or does it insist on using tags? And if you can view by folder, will it play tracks in the correct order? Gapless playback?

It is these litte details that urge me (and surely others?) to get a discrete cheap mp3 player instead of using the one on my phone. My phone's music player does stupid stuff such as willfully ignoring the numbers at the front of a filename and playing them alphabetically, e.g: [08 brain damage] > [02 breathe] instead of the correct way around.

Any illumination appreciated, ta!

Apple 24in iMac (March 2009)

People are right...

...to point out that the standard keyboard is available at no extra cost with the iMac- or £28 PC WORLD / John Lewis, my friend bought two 'cos he thinks they work great with his bigger fingers. (The internet was suprisingly quiet about keyboards for chaps with big fingers, I would have thought at least one tech blog would have mentioned the issue in a keyboard review roundup)

However, the little Apple remote (that stick of chewing gum) is now NOT included in the box and will cost you extra.

Hollywood to totally recall Total Recall

My first thoughts...

...were WTF? Why?

My second thoughts were less focused, more fuzzy and musing on Sci Fi, loosly aimed towards Paul Murphey (but aimed like a friendly orange, not a board-eraser):

Sci fi films are a dissapointment these days; the only hope I have is that James (Aliens Terminator Abyss) Cameroon's *Avatar* will be all it promises to be, you can do it JC! Computer games offer a good way to present novels since they take several days or weeks to digest, not hours- though really, I just want to crash/shoot things; Bungie, creators of Halo, say they are more influenced by sci fi literature than by Sci Fi movies. Just read the book. Niven rocks, though until recently I had only come across his concepts through Iain M Banks, Halo and Arthur C Clarke. The best film adaptations take huge liberties with the original novel because they want to make a good FILM (or just becuase they HAVE to, in the case of PKDick or William S Burroughs). Blade Runner and Total Recal fucking rock. Is Baxter a cYOUnt? I haven't decided but I'm leaning towards Yes. (Baxter as in "Asimov, Baxter and Clarke" "Aren't you forgeting Bradbury?"- Bart Simpson. )

How would you like a move of Consider Phleabus to be made? "With a fucking large budget" - Ian Banks.

WTF? Why remake Total Recall? Make something new, it might work!

/ focus returning

Apple shares MacBook break-in tips

@ jai -Good Idea. Screw replacement

Sketching the screw locations is a good idea. Some find it even easier to use corrogated cardboard instead of paper- then you can just puch the screws in and not bother with the sellotape.

Also, read a chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from page 301 onwards - "Gumption" and how not to lose it.

Sony plans movie+game dual-media Blu-ray Discs

Movie tie-in games...

are usually crap. Goldeneye for the N64 was an exception. It was better than the film. It was even better than PC first-person shooting games at the time as well, when previous console FPS were rubbish.

It also allowed four people to play on one machine... I like the PS3, but a few too many of its games are only multiplayer over a network.

Irish ISP Eircom in 'three strike' filesharer crackdown

5000 songs...

can be downloaded legally, from iTunes or Amazon, unsigned acts' demos and copyright materials. I agree that advertising on the Pirate Bay was 'asking for it', but hell, even the memory card for my camera advertised itself in the number of photos, mp3s and videos it could hold.

My friend still has some hard-copy promotional literature from VirginMedia telling him how much he can download (50 hours of video in a 24hr period, or somesuch) though he doesn't get close to that in reality - hell, it takes 5 minutes for him just to check his emails between the hours 1800 to 2300 when it goes slow... Virgin just claim that he is in the heaviest 5% of users (they won't tell him how much he CAN use his connection without suffering a crippling slowdown). We even asked them if it was possible someone had cloned his MAC address and stealing his bandwidth allowance, but they claimed that was impossible.

Okay, I drifted off topic there, but does this ruling mean that Greenpeace can clobber you if you measured a football stadium in blue whales?

Desktop integrated graphics shoot-out

Please help this idiot (me)

Um... My brain is a little slow today... which these of motherboards would be best for building a cheapish, cool and QUIET media centre PC? Or would a Playstation 3 (at 250 GBP) be better for this task?

Sniper-aiding app arrives for iPhone

Not the first time...

that PDAs have been used for hitting the target. I believe PalmPilots, connected to a laser range finder, GPS module and suitable radio were used by the US Army. The palm would know where you were (GPS), where you were pointing (laser range-finder, with direction component) and was able to send this info to whoever had the bombs/guns.

This was all cheap off-the-shelf civilian kit which cost very little... one can only imagine how much it it would have cost had it been developed through military procurement processes.

It was in New Scientist, for anyone with a subcription to their archives.

Seagate isolates 'potential' Barracuda flaw

"Seagate emphasised that there is no safety issue with these products."

I'm trying to think of how a harddisk could be dangerous, the spinning platters encased within a cast body within a steel PC case as they are, with no flammable bits.

The only scenario I can concoct is if they vibrated at such a frequency as to resonate with the PC, causing it to fall off the desk and squash a particularly slow cat.

I would love to hear any other theories you gentle folk might be able to come up with.

Health n Safety dude icon, because.

Mac mini said to get Ion innards

And the point is...

Umm so... if I'm understanding this article right, we don't know if the new mac mini will be any faster than the old one- will this mean that it will be cheaper, sold on green / power efficiency credentials, smaller form factor or all of the above?

Or will it out-perform the current Mac mini due to Snow Leopard GPU as CPU support, current Adobe (traditional Mac strength) GPU support or have market placement as a media centre thingy (in which the GPU will be handy?)

Who knows. I don't.

There were a lot of 'or's in what I've just written, I'm still recovering from the Reg's mention-by-proxy of the Cheeky Girls (that Lempik Opik story).

Haloed Jobs because I hope he isn't due to join the celestial choir yet.

Child porn in the age of teenage 'sexting'

Just as daft as

that story bout the 17 Georgian lad who got ten years for receiving the labial affections (what is the current Reg euphamism?) of a 15 year old girl at a party.

Hell, 12 year old girls were once the centre of my world- when I was 12. Just as I now love women in their late twenties like me (not as lardy as the new crop of twenty-somethings, just my preference though and nothing for rounded lasses to worry about as long as they are happy). School kids had their own social mechanisms (social mechanisms that matured just as the kids did), generally a two-year age gap in relationships was scoffed at but accepted, a larger gap (largely unheard of) would result in longer-term piss-taking etc

These girls taking snaps of themselves... some will be happy, some will suffer the resulting humilation amongst their peers and adjust their future behaviour accordingly- its called learning. If we are to be sacred about children, it has to be for the sake of allowing them to make mistakes amongst their peers without it being invaded by a peado or prosocuter.

National Safety Council seeks total* cell-phone driving ban

So people will do what, then?

Blathering away on a mobile when driving is unnecessary- but surely making a short hands-free call whilst driving (e.g "I'm stuck in traffic, home in an hour" or "What's the name of your street again?") can be safer than pulling in, parking and then pulling out again. It's certainly more fuel efficient! Was a risk assement on the alternatives to taking a call (including the resulting preoccupation with any untaken call) even a part of this study?

And that is before we consider RAC men, policemen, delivery drivers and others who have need telecommunications.

Who here hasn't had some numpty pull out on them from a parked position? I'm sure you have, Mr Reed. Though sympathetic to your two-wheeled situation, I don't think banning all calls is the answer to all your woes - in fact, it could result in much hurried witless parking in bike lanes, bus stops and the like, with cars crossing cyclists' routes twice in the process.

Chilean anti-piracy law drafted on pirated software

Unattended Edition...

...looks handy, and worth visiting for the video links (babe with bulgarian airbags skipping) this blogger has collected:

http://themostboringblogintheworld.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/downloads-windows-xp-sp2-unattended-edition-version-6-released/

We wouldn't complain about bundled software if it was as useful, neat and humble as the some of the apps listed here.

Appletops may get juice pump

@ A. C. re Ben Heck's 360 Laptop...

I believe he's made Mk III just recently. I'm glad that there is someone out threre who is as good at putting things together as he is at taking them apart!

Is there any truth in the news of Apple applying for patents thery never intend to us for the purpose of disguising their future product road-maps?

Coat Icon- man retrieving water-cooled calculator from the pocket.

They did a lovely job

... with the Cube, having the motherboard in the shape of a chimney and using convection to cool it without fans. I digress, but though that their previous takes on the heat-sinking issue was worth rememberiiing.

It isn't obvious from El Reg's write up what exactley is novel in the patent, or indeed from the patent application, since it attempts to cover several variations- some of which must surely have been done before. Using the rear of the screen as the heat sink makes sense, and is new to me.

Can anyone do a better job than my tired brain at highlighting the new idea in this patent?

(I'm not an apple fanboy, never had one. But that their use of a "super-cable" from your 'puter to your desk with combined video, monitor power, audio in/out, and some USB ports is an innovation I wish had spread to the PC world (not bloomin likely when people brought kit by comparing numbers) - so I had a solution those times my dad cried out "Why have I got a f#cking snakes' nest behond my desk?".)

Flames - because when my eBook reaches 451 degrees farenheit it censors itself.

Lords told to listen to science on cannabis

Drop in use

Which Radio4 newreader was it who commented on a news story about Vietmanese gangs not growing dope within the M25 because of high property prices with "Whats the world coming to when an Englishman can't grow cannibis in his own home?"

Consumption may also be down because the price has been driven up by energy rates... indoor grow systems use a lot of electricity, so some growers are finding things uneconomical. In this age of capping Carbon Emissions, legalisation or decriminalisation would allow it to be grow in more environmentally-friendly greenhouses.

Did the width move for you, darling?

1 1/2 constructive comments

1: I liked the way that old reg gave a flavour of the comments at the end of the article. It only took up five lines.

1/2: This point isn't for Reg to act on, but if I can't raise it here...

If many sites are fixed width, maybe browsers can have a feature where the browser is MAXIMISED to to the width of the page, and no more. Having said that, my windows are always in a mess, so I'm sure that some combination of discipline/keyboard shortcuts/third-party apps can help me here.

Off-topic warning:

Oh, can we have a screaming Balmer icon?

Evil Gates because my new XBOX has scratched my only game and they want to charge me a tenner for a replacement disc. WTF? Surely piracy is bad because it is stealing IP. If I've paid to use said IP in my home within the termsof the licence (I.E bought a game to play it) then surely I deserve another copy of the IP for fair cost (if I return the damaged orginal, of course)? I don't understand why MS are giving legitimacy to the console hacker's/freetard's excuse of enabling 'back-ups'. Grrr!

I'm glad Blu-ray won, 'cos scratch-proofing of the disc is mandatory part of the format.