* Posts by The Indomitable Gall

1657 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Real-time movie FX editing on the Flash PCIe cards

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Dumb Question: Why not more RAM ?

"So why not just put a shed load of normal DRAM memory into the machine, and let the O/S filesystem caching kick in ?"

Because having your cache reads and writes on the same memory bus doubles the traffic, effectively halving the data throughput.

As PCIe is on the memory bus anyway, you write once to PCIe. You presumably read it off the card without involving the system bus at all.

That should, in theory, prevent the system bus becoming a bottleneck....

Death Star dinosaur aliens could rule galaxy

The Indomitable Gall

Actually, no.

The real danger is that the dino-DNA depositing debris reaches an inhabited planet before the terrestrial broadcast of Jurassic Park is successfully decoded and some foolish scientists attempt to clone the DNA. Of course, the back-to-front amino acids that the scientists will no doubt be composed of is likely to give T Rex a bad case of heartburn, but that'll only serve to make him even crankier....

Bacteria isolated for four million years beat newest antibiotic

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Now, that's strange

"There are some people who just feel that if something can not be demonstrated in a lab, through the Scientific Method, it is not science."

Am I to take it that you think astrophysics is not a science, then? I've certainly never seen a lab big enough to house a galaxy....

Too small to fail: Obama signs Nontrepreneurs Act

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Re: Wait a minute

"I thought one of the lefty mantras was that business was no good and deserved no breaks and needed to be watched like a cat watching a mouse."

It is.

What's your point.

Oh wait, you think that Obama's a leftie... Good God, the West Coast may be blue, but that doesn't make the Democrats left-wing!

Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

The Indomitable Gall

Best thing on BBC3...?

"As for Family Guy, there's a show which should have been off the air a long time ago. And it's _still_ the best thing on BBC3."

That's only because Mongrels isn't currently broadcasting....

Five charged after fanboi sells kidney for iPad and iPhone

The Indomitable Gall

Re: I WOULDNT SELL A KIDNEY FOR AN IPAD

You forget that most American cars have an automatic gearbox, so you only need one foot anyway.

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

The Indomitable Gall

Enforce the laws?

@Graham Dawson:

"Enforce the laws that exist rather than creating new ones. Of course that leaves copyright as a mostly civil matter in the UK, which is apparently an undesirable outcome for some people."

Erm.... I think that's what ACAP was trying to do -- produce a protocol that allows the existing laws to be enforced.

Feathered Tyrannosaurus uncovered in China

The Indomitable Gall
Coat

Re: Yutyrannus, me Jane.

Q: Yutyrannus huali?

A: Ali man who box in 60s.

Yes, Prime Minister to return after 24 years

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Leads

Surely he'll get at least a walk-on as a member of the House of Lords, though...

Lucy in 3.4 million-year-old cross-species cave tryst

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Re: Not long ago all scientists were creationists

@No, I will not fix your computer

I think he's referring to the cult-like behaviour of Dawkins and his mindless fans. Dawkins love of evolution led to his espousal of the daft notion of "memes", and I'm not talking about Downfall subs.

Dawkins does want to see evolution as the sole guiding principle of all science, and he's a stuck-up, self-important pseud.

But again, I ask the OP not to portray all atheists as fanatics, just as we don't judge all Christians by the standards of Irish bishops or Westboro Baptist....

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Not long ago all scientists were creationists

The fact that a vocal minority of non-religious people are childish thickos who mistake name-calling for intelligent debate is lamentable, but don't fall into the trap of generalising this to the whole bunch of us. I am a complete agnostic, and will never ever be an atheist, because it's an intellectually unsupportable standpoint.

However, you'd have to be blinder than Saul to miss the irony in your post. You espouse religion. Why? Presumably because you were told it was true -- there isn't much more than that to go on with religion. Now that in and of itself is not a bad thing -- I believe in your right to have a faith and to profess that faith, and I would defend that right for you -- it's just that you reject evolution by the very same mechanism that you accept faith.

And what maths am I to check? You haven't provided any figures. The long-term movement of the moon is a very hard thing to model indeed -- celestial motion falls into the realm of complex systems; AKA "Chaos theory". It's such a difficult mathematical problem that it's currently technically unsolvable -- there is still too much to learn about gravitational interactions.

Moreover, how is the motion of the moon an example of the flaws in the theory of evolution? As long as the moon existed before the evolution of the modern moth, it's largely irrelevant when or how it got there....

The Indomitable Gall

Re: I'll bet we'll find plenty of other species too.

"being thick as two short planks is genetic"

Genes are only one factor in intelligence. But by far the biggest factor is education. Children in an environment with low mental stimulation are less well educated when they start school and never catch up.

(On the other hand, I've known many people in degree-educated jobs who do seem quite thick despite all that education...)

UK government says no to turbo e-bike

The Indomitable Gall

Re: - Govt can't keep the pace?

That small minority tends to ride sub-£500 bikes. Anyone who goes past the grand mark tends to be a bit more sensible.

PlayStation 4 'Orbis' pegged for 2013 release

The Indomitable Gall

Paradox....

Most tools to allow people to develop games quicker are tools that tend to push them towards a particular style in a particular format with particular mechanics.

In other words, they're tools to develop FPSes ang RPGs.

Angry Birds Space

The Indomitable Gall

Sorry, no.

The "fluke" tag is entirely justified. There's plenty of times I've looked like I've been on for a one-shot win, but one plank has fallen awkwardly and blocked everything, making the level uncompletable. That difference between a perfect win and a complete fail is too tiny to be under my control -- AB is largely luck.

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings

The Indomitable Gall

Re: This doesnt hold water (or air for that matter)

Definitely -- it has the look of a Harryhausen about it...

Sadly it's easier to convince someone something is real by making it look like a film than by making it look, you know, real.

Geeks seek cubits for Battlestar flight sim

The Indomitable Gall

Re: You guys are way too cynical

Perhaps so, but the first lesson they need to learn is where to start, and they started at the wrong place. They built a huge whopping rig before having a working prototype -- they said that they've still to develop the Arduino code, but they should have got that up and running with a Lego or plywood prototype before getting the welding equipment out. I can't see how they're going to manage to retrofit the actuators into the bearings -- they might have to dismantle it and start again.

Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

The Indomitable Gall

Car dealerships

Car dealerships pay a LOT of money to be an official Vauxhall/Ford/BMW whatever dealer and service centre. Warranty terms often specify that all servicing must be carried out by an official dealer, and that repairs must use official spare parts. That keeps the customer's business with the manufacturer for several years. Even afterwards, there's still a lot of money in aftermarket parts that are increasingly specialised and difficult to reproduce.

Furthermore, a car costs thousands of pounds and R&D is a relatively small component of that -- manufacturing costs are high.

Manufacturing costs for digitial media and cardboard packaging are negligible, but the time spent developing a commercial game is absolutely huge.

High Court confirms 'cheap DVD' tax loophole will close

The Indomitable Gall

Copyright mafia

"I’m also sure that the copyright mafiaa did some lobbying on this to ensure the plebs pay more for their music."

Erm... why? The content producers have nothing to gain from this. Low taxation keeps pre-tax sales prices high, so I would imagine it means the label's share of the sale stays up. Slightly lower prices also lead to slightly higher sales, so they win again.

You don't like record labels -- fine. But don't blame them for every evil in the world.

Mobile gaming: battle of the gadgets

The Indomitable Gall
Happy

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but...

I'm not a hardcore gamer (I got out of gaming after suffering work-related RSI) but as someone who was on the road frequently with work a few years ago, I can see the benefit in being able to walk into a hotel, kick off my shoes, jump on the bed and start playing my games. The work laptop always had one or two games on it (up until the drive encryption and app lockdown -- grrr!!!) but that also meant carrying DVD ROMs everywhere.

At the time, a device like the Xperia Play with wireless TV connection would have been a godsend.

Pollster charts rise and rise of the e-book reader

The Indomitable Gall

Stats.

If they keep increasing at that rate, there'll be two people reading ebooks for every one person on the planet within a decade!!!

Top Brit authors turn flamethrowers on barmy IPO

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Abso-bloody-lutely

They don't do this now because that would be against "the market". It would be "big government", which is Satan's own political system eh wot, doncha know.

Funnily enough, there is one area where educational materials *are* centrally funded: Gaelic-medium education in Scotland. The Mail, the Tax-Payers' Alliance et al will immediately jump up and down about the thousands being spent on a-language-that-isn't-God's-own-English, and completely fail to do the sums... under which they'd find that centrally commissioned material is actually head-for-head cheaper than stuff subject to market forces.

You can explain this to an economist in two words: "reduced risk", yet somehow the idea that reducing competition reduces efficiency (which is generally true, but not applicable here) leaves them incapable of accepting this simplest of simple law of economics.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Ooookaayyyy

@Irish donkey

"is it reasonable that eBooks cost the Public Sector more than the current paper based versions?"

Until the reuse license issue is sorted, vs wear and tear of physical books, the relative value of paper vs ebooks is still debatable.

SimCity to return after 10-year holiday

The Indomitable Gall

Modding?

You've missed the "online" bit. The real money is in subscriptions, not sales, so this is likely to be heavily tied to EA's own servers, and modding will be banned.

Restaurant takes the piss, recycles it as fertiliser

The Indomitable Gall

It's the nitrogen stoopid.

There isn't much of value in urine, but it does provide nitrogen in a soil-friendly form. At normal concentration, urine can singe and burn plants, but water it down, and it becomes a good source of nourishment. My big brother used to wee in the garden after a night on the juice, and we got nice thick green patches out of it, because it was adequately diluted when it came out.

Facebook blamed for getting Thai teens up the duff

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Old fashioned solutions to old fashioned problems.

3 thumbs down? I assume you didn't realise this was a joke. As in "not serious". Jeeeez.....

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Old fashioned solutions to old fashioned problems.

I think modern society is forgetting that our ancestors had problems with teen pregnancy too. Society evolved a very neat solution for dealing with the problem, and I think it would serve us well to learn from the wisdom of our ancestors. Unfortunately, that solution has been taken from us by liberal laws. No, I'm not talking about whipping (for some people, that's a turn-on, so more sex) or "honour killings" (if you're willing to kill your kid, then obviously it's your fault he/she turned out that way -- you're not a very loving father. No, I'm talking about the good old, traditional shotgun wedding.

It's got everything:

* compensation for the injured party (the knocked up girl gets financial support)

* punishment for the injuring party (where do you think the phrase "ball and chain" comes from?)

* an active deterrent (before you sh@g this burd/bloke, ask yourself, could you bear spending the rest of your life with them...?)

Seriously, Thailand, enact a shotgun marriage statute and the numbers WILL drop. Guaranteed.

The Indomitable Gall
Holmes

Re: so how come....

Probably cos while our kids are having a lot of sex, they're wrapping themselves up nice and snug before venturing into the magic cave.

Weeing Frenchman sues Google over Street View photo

The Indomitable Gall
Unhappy

Re: I know

" You make it sound like Google maliciously and deliberately posted the photo just to embarrass him.But the fact of the matter is that this guy is not the first to get caught... err.. out, nor will he be the last. "

No, it's that Google negligently published the picture without any editorial control, despite various similar incidents in the past. Google's business model is "give offerings to the Almighty Algorithm", and is predicated on minimal human intervention. Even if he gets the money he's asked for, Google will continue to do this, and people will continue to be compromised in Google snaps. Because it's making lots of money for Google.

Microsoft tripped up by Blighty's techie skills gap

The Indomitable Gall

Traditional Universities FTW

I went to a traditional uni, and a decade in IT since has proven the value of a proper education, instead of a glorified Microsoft bootcamp.

I may not have known the tools everyone was using, and the company may not have realised the value in training me in them (instead of moaning that I didn't know how to use them), but for everything I picked up, I was better than my colleagues. Why? They were limited by the tools. "This is how it works." "You can't do that with X." Or better yet "you can't do that with computers."

Basically, I learned about computers, and most of my colleagues learnt Visual Studio and SQL Server. Now I've left corporate IT to start work on my own development project, doing lots of very simple things that my colleagues would have thought impossible, because there isn't a .NET function that does it for them.

Give me a traditional education any day.

Younger generation taking 'sledgehammer' to security

The Indomitable Gall

Wherefore art thou, firewall?

The firewall is and always will be vital. The firewall's first and most important job is to prevent "exploratory" hacking -- someone getting on to the network and looking for exploits on the individual servers. You can't be sure you've eliminated all security holes, so you add an extra level of defence.

It's just like having a door on your building, and a gate on your campus, really.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Choices

Even better -- give them a "continuous partial salary".

People _do_ _not_ multitask in any higher cognitive functions. People only multitask in one higher function alongside other automatised functions. Split attention kills productivity, which is why always-on email is so corrosive in the workplace -- it breaks all sense of flow or concentration.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: doesn't accept from single source

Maybe the coded message is "see those youngsters youngsters you're hiring? They bolstered their pocket money by running a spam ring on the side."

Asus peddles three-in-one smartphone, tablet, netbook

The Indomitable Gall

Re: I like this.

HDMI out is increasingly common on phones. Hopefully the docking connector will be the same on the phone and the tablet so you can dock the phone and then use HDMI....

The Indomitable Gall

Branding...?

Have Asus no idea about branding at all? The name "Asus" is a week brand (I keep mixing them up with Acer, and I've got an Asus laptop and an Acer Ee.... oh look, I've done it again). They've just dropped the Eee brand for Transformer, and just when the ultimate "Transformer" form factor appears, they go and change it again. What's wrong with "Transformer Phone" or "Transformer Padphone"?

The next step could have been a "Transformer home" -- a lap-mounted keyboard with phone dock and wireless HDMI.

One computer, all form-factors. Transformer, indeed.

Avoid flying next to blubberbeasts with seatmate-finding site

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Re: Re: Question:

If sales models aren't applicable, why did you start talking about one? And I've never taken a marketing course, I just happen to know what that word means.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Question:

" Am I the only one who remembers when "apps" were called "shareware"? "

Yes, you are. Because it was never the case. "Apps" have always been "apps" or "applications", a functional subdivision of "software". "Shareware" is a subset of software by sales model.

Playboy, Virgin Galactic tout zero-grav nookie in spaaaaace!

The Indomitable Gall
Coat

Surely shome mishtake...?

"...indeed any other celestial bodies."

Heavenly bodies, surely...?

Proview parks IPAD battle tanks on Apple's US lawn

The Indomitable Gall

Proview IPAD...?

The one thing that's been missing through this whole debacle: a picture of whatever sort of product a Proview ipad is supposed to be...!

LOHAN's flying truss: One orb or two?

The Indomitable Gall

If you were to build a platform above the balloons, surely you'd want 3 balloons? 2 points describe a line, and the platform wouldn't be stable if it was only supported on one axis. 3 points describe a plane -- and that's what we'd be looking for here....

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Re: Equalise pressure?

This seems wrong. For one thing, wouldn't the bigger one have the greater surface tension, because it's under tension from like, you know, the air in it...?

I may have to go to the supermarket for balloons and drinking straws now....

The Indomitable Gall

Propeller?

At that altitude the air pressure's so low that you'd need a whacking great propeller to shift enough air to move the rig, surely?

The Indomitable Gall
Holmes

Feedback for apprentice boffin...

A boffin's pipe should lie at least 15 degrees off the mouth's normal (otherwise known as "the nose"). This allows for a relaxed, comfortable light grasp when pondering a question put to you by a fellow intellectual or an inquisitive member of the public.

A pipe held co-incident with the normal offend causes offense or injury when you inadvertently prod someone with it.

Microsoft explains bland new Windows logo

The Indomitable Gall
Megaphone

Re: Back to basics?

"Ever since 3.1 the logo has always been RGB-Y, its very distinguishable and plain out recognizable."

I'm not so sure. Starting with Google and Playstation, bright, bold colours have become something of the norm. The iconicity of the Windows logo was that it was four colours -- which colours they were doesn't really matter. Then there's the individual colour branding of MS Office apps, which has bled across to LibreOffice, imitating the ancient art of crisp-packet design (that's potato chips for those who get up late in the morning), which has further devalued Windows-colours as a brand.

And aside from that, colour technology has moved on. With fades and wipes and grades and alpha-channeling, on-screen colour works in ways that are far more different from what came before. The Start button (which is on it's way out anyway) has become increasingly out of step with every generation of Windows since 95, because it's a product of its time -- when Windows 3.x ruled the roost, there wasn't much more than a few bright, bold colours, and that was exciting. The Windows logo screamed "look, we're in colour!!!!", nowadays it just screams, and delivers no message.

Boy burned in Nintendo sensor substitution

The Indomitable Gall

Is the top of your TV flat?

The top of my TV is slightly sloped. The top of the TV in the sitting room is flat, but very narrow.

I suspect this is why things went a bit Pete Tong.

Ten... Freesat TV receivers

The Indomitable Gall

Deleting files....

Given that even your average desktop OS isn't capable of queuing file operations, I'm not that surprised if a Freesat box isn't.

Although I still don't get WHY your average desktop OS isn't capable of queing file operations, to be fair....

Muscle pants give girls that skin-stripped look

The Indomitable Gall

And there I was thinking "I bet a guys version would sell really well among cyclists.... (Although it's generally best to stick to black around the crotch area -- light-coloured lycra tends to show off contours a little immodestly...

LOHAN lifts skirt on 3D printed parts

The Indomitable Gall

"Hewn"?

Now I'm not normally one to be pedantic (language changes, and all that), but we're talking technical detail here...

Sintering is a form of printing -- it's an additive process. "Hewing" is carving chunks out of something -- a subtractive process.

AON: Give us cash, we'll emit 10TB holographic cube

The Indomitable Gall

20 years ago....

20 years ago, the lasers and mirrors required meant while the medium was small, the read/write apparatus was humungous. This was because lasers were more difficult to make, and there was presumably significant power loss in the medium.

There have been many incremental improvements since then in both media and laser tech, so I'd guess that it's on the cusp of being a commercially viable technology. The last attempt to produce something was a disc, and aimed at the removable media market, and that introduced certain engineering complications.

These guys have a better chance, as they'll be aiming at the fixed-drive market, and now's a very good time for that, as SSDs have opened the market to non-disk-based systems. It also plays to the miniaturisation trend even more than SSDs - if they can get the power requirements low enough, the next-gen iPod won't only be able to hold your entire CD collection, it'll be able to store your entire DVD collection too... and perhaps even without any additional compression.

Put this in an Android phone and the era of the truly universal personal portable computer will begin, and office desks the world over will have mobile phone docking stations instead of PCs or laptop stands.

Apple won't rule out all singing, all dancing iBooks on Kindle

The Indomitable Gall

AIUI, the iBook format is little more than an extension of HTML. The R&D for it is negligible.