Posts by Charles 9

Sony HMZ-T1 3D head mounted display

No, because now you're sick.

Vertigo is a sign of "simulation sickness", a condition in which your senses get confused and the brain gets all twisted as a result. Think of it as motion sickness only coming from the other direction. Your eyes are told there is motion. There is stereoscopic differential, motion, and a bunch of other cues that makes the brain think, "Okay, I'm moving". Only thing is, the vestbular system in your ear (which help the brain determine 3D orientation--think natural gyroscopes) say you're standing still. The brain takes a look at these conflicting reports and gets the following result: "I'm perceiving movement when I'm not moving (I'm trusting the vestibular system on this--it isn't as easy to fool). Therefore, the eyes are hallucinating. MUST'VE BEEN SOMETHING I ATE." THEN the nausea begins as the body tries to get rid of the possible cause of the hallucination.

Several practical concerns.

First off, look at the earlier VR systems. They usually encircled you in a ring. If you walk around in a true VR settings, you're naturally going to start walking. The effect tends to get spoiled if you end up tripping over the coffee table or crashing into the wall. Neuroscience looks to be a considerable distance now just from mental control but mental INTERCEPT--being able to take neural impulses meant to make you start walking and redirect them elsewhere; not to mention it's likely to be somewhat disturbing.

As for being able to display true volumetric 3D scenes without glasses, there's a whole world of light issues to get around. For example, how do you make light reflect and refract off something that isn't really there, in a specific wavelength and pattern? It's one sci-fi angle scientists haven't been able to even BEGIN to bridge. That's why the focus on head-mounted displays. It's a lot easier to trick a brain and a pair of eyes than it is to bend the laws of physics.

Fusion boffins crack shreddy eddy plasma puzzle

Halfway right.

Deuterium is the easy part. You can get that simply by cracking water (and it's easy to crack water). Tritium, OTOH, you're right about. The easiest way to go about it is to hit lithium-6 with a neutron (it's doubly good--any neutron can do the job and the process releases rather than consumes energy). Other methods are either energy-intensive or low in yield. Still, it may be worth checking out used nuclear fuel and heavy-water reactors to scrape up more sources. Ontario already does this with its HWR.

Amazon's new Kindle Fire stripped naked

Not like Amazon made it hard.

They conceded (and the Reg reported on this) that the Fire will get rooted eventually. Their attitude is rather cavalier--partly because a rooted Fire is still an Android tablet, and Amazon already has Android apps for those occasions.

US stealth bombers finally get nuke-nobbling super bomb

Also...

...because the Iranian government and clergy seem not just willing but EAGER to witness if not START Armageddon.

http://armageddonalert.blogspot.com/2011/03/12th-imam-and-islamic-propecy.html

Talking about Eternal War or the 12th Imam (essentially Islam's version of The Second Coming) leads one to suspect that deterrence will not affect such a mindset. Even MAD won't sway them—to them it would be a WINNING scenario.

Easy enough...

...if you knew WHERE they were all located. But what about if the opponent took that into consideration and used hardened or reinforced shafts, included redundancies to allow for one or more of them to collapse, or even included facilities to allow for being cut off from the outside for a time—say, long enough for the outside to get a new opening made?

Mozilla stirs netizens against US anti-piracy law

But that's what they WANT.

They WANT to control your lives. This is 1984 through the back door, and since the "monied powers" hold all the aces, there's very little you can do about it. Even the Occupy movements are starting to be trumped by sheer force. Barring an unprecedented uprising or riot (which may just be quelled by the National Guard--remember Kent State), all the protesting in the world is going to do is suck savings accounts dry (since the protesters are not working).

The ballot? Already rigged. No honest candidate will even get a toe in the proverbial door. All an election does now, to paraphrase a certain British comic book artist, is to determine who's going to screw us next.

In the worst case, there may even be a few deep down who would WELCOME a natural disaster removing a chunk of the American population: less rabble to clean up, after all. Their answer to anyone complaining would be, "Curl up somewhere and DIE already."

So unless there's some miraculous enlightenment somewhere, about the only way the USA won't get flushed down the crapper is (ironically) some form of absolute ruler coming along and saying, "OK, this is what we're gonna do, and we're doing it NOW!" It has to be something with absolute force or the status quo will find a way to blunt it.

Motorola Razr Android smartphone

*** A POLITE REMINDER ***

That all the complaints about Motorola NOT updating their Android handsets come with two important caveats:

1) All Motorola Android handsets prior to this carried the Motoblur overlay. The Droid RAZR is the first to drop it.

2) All this occurred PRIOR to Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Since it would be in Google's best interest to get Ice Cream Sandwich out as quickly as possible, expect Motorola handsets to get ICS updates as soon as they're able.

But remember.

Google OWNS Motorola Mobility now. So they'll be keen to put their latest Android OS's onto Motorola handsets as soon as it is safe. The RAZR probably has Gingerbread only because ICS came out too late to perform proper testing and rejigging prior to rollout.

Freebie Android anti-malware scanners flunk tests

It's their way or the highway.

Basically, most conscientious app developers want the say. Especially those reliant on ad revenues. Otherwise, there's no money in it for them, so no incentive to put the app up, so no app. Over on the other side, Apple does the same thing to the developers. Just as developers want the final say or they won't publish, so Apple wants the FINAL final say or they won't vet your app.

As for people jabbing Windows, you're looking at the wrong angle. Closed APP, but open PLATFORM. Same story here. And the main reason Apple can keep the walled garden closed is because they control the walls--both App and Platform are CLOSED in the Apple ecosystem.

Logitech CEO: Google TV a 'gigantic mistake'

Actually, they DO.

It's part of the "right" in copyright. Redistribution rights are part of modern copyrights, so the broadcasters can say who gets to display their show and who can't. It's part of the drive behind DRM, and also one of the reasons modern players work the way they do: to enforce those rights as strictly as they can. The odd users taking clips from their shows for a mashup is small loss and even covered under "Fair Use" provisions, but if Google were to try to glom stuff off the NBC website without NBC's OK, Google can expect to see lawyers at the door.

Reality TV.

Seems to me that what's happening is that, with so many specialist channels, it becomes awfully hard to stand out. People are picking favourites. These days, most people watch TV to escape, not out of any intellectual pursuit (you wanna learn, surf the web).

BTW, if boring or simple shows are showing on TV and good stuff isn't, consider that television is a business just like any other business. The shows ride on the real moneymakers (the ads--I refer to most TV but not premium channels or subsidised content like the BBC), and ads get the most money when the most viewers watch. Why does reality TV get so much attention? It's not just because it's cheap, but also because people watch it--AT LENGTH.

Fingerprint scanner can detect drugs in sweat

Read the article again.

They took that into consideration. The resolution of the scanner is high enough that it can pinpoint the sweat pores on your fingertip. This allows them to eliminate residuals by making sure the matches correspond to the pores. Furthermore, they're testing for the stuff that can ONLY appear in sweat. So they wouldn't be testing so much for cocaine as its metabolic byproduct, which escapes me ATM.

Not quite.

Private businesses are not subject to the 5th Amendment (they're not part of the government) and are perfectly free to do drug screening as part of the application process. Indeed, many businesses prominently post on their "Help Wanted" signs that drug users (and you WILL be tested) are not welcome, since having a drug user on the payroll is usually a turn-off to customers and sometimes a legal risk to boot.

As for government positions, high-security jobs usually already have an exemption in place that allows them to use polygraphs. Drug screening would probably fall under the same exemption.

Valve admits forum hack exposed gamers' privates

How else can the reach you?

I personally received a notice through their Steam News screens, which usually appear once you leave a Steam app. But unless you regularly check the Steam page or your e-mail, how else can they get through to you? If they post a popup, they get railed for a potential abuse avenue (as of now, they only pop up on restart requests, and this is OK since these require user intervention).

OFFICIAL: Last Western Black rhino snuffs it

There is a concern.

The concern is that wiping out all these species starts dulling the world's genetic diversity, and any evolutionary will attest, diversity is good for the biosphere, since it makes it hardier against disease and other threats. Furthermore, obscure species may hold genetic secrets that could prove extremely useful...if they're still around when we discover them.

New plastic telescope ammo machine gun is light as a rifle

It's not a false question.

Because just ONE galvanizing moment can shape things like you wouldn't believe. An excellent example in multiple cases is Pearl Harbor. The strike was unprovoked. IOW, the fight came to the Americans. Furthermore, it was a military strike: a surprise attack meant to cripple American presence in the Pacific and thus give the Japanese free reign. Yet as a result of the unprovoked attack, American sentiment polarized as quickly as the word got around. Things CAN move quickly with the right motivation: righteous indignation or an existential threat tend to be two of the strongest motivators.

So what if an avowed enemy of your homeland decides to launch an all-out campaign against your country: no holds barred? He either wipes you out or destroys the world trying, so MAD is not a deterrent but a winning scenario. And he's willing to strike first, so the question applies. How does a scrupulous party defeat an UNscrupulous opponent for whom NOTHING is taboo?

Then riddle me this.

How do you defeat a foe willing to break the rules without breaking the rules yourself?

Lemmings

Competition.

Sony didn't want to draw people away from their PlayStation Portable line and especially not the upcoming PlayStation Vita.

Not Altered Beast.

That was a Sega title. Your more likely refer to Shadow of the Beast, a scrolling beat-em-up with notorious difficulty.

In any event, the sound in the PC version was OK but nothing compared to the Amiga version, and it didin't support digitized Sound Blaster sound (last I checked). The eventual Mac port found a way to preserve the sounds as well: probably with something like a MOD playing engine.

And in terms of publishers, you are correct. It was DEVELOPED by DMA Design but PUBLISHED by Psygnosis. Thus the situation Lemmings is in now. Because although Rockstar bought DMA Design, Sony bought Psygnosis, and rights tends to pass by the PUBLISHER rather than the DEVELOPER. IIRC, these days, Sony's Lemmings games are being developed by Team 17 (the developers behind the Worms series).

Bill Gates drops $1m on laser-based malaria fighter

Then riddle me this, Batman...

How do you make a doorway so that it allows people but not mosquitoes (including ones potentially riding ON the person)?

Unrelated, but funny.

Before I read the article, I thought the system was going to be a system for tracking and burning the bugs with laser beams. Reminded me of a spoof commercial out of "Not Necessarily The News" for "Fly Wars" that supposedly did just that. Admitted it was a jab at the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars"), but it was still funny ("Look for Luke Flyswatter on the label!").

US Army orders more Judge Dredd smartgun ammo

Perhaps.

But they are likely secondary to the issue of the cost of ammo. And they had a good reference point. After a number of "spray and pray" issues in Vietnam, one of the first things modified in the transition from M-16 to M-16A2 was to remove full auto.

Not always big but ALWAYS heavy.

When it comes to kinetic projectiles, MASS matters (as mass has a direct effect on inertia, which in turn contributes to your penetrating force). So even if you don't want your kinetic penetrator to necessarily be big, you DO want it to be DENSE. That's why the penetrator itself (not counting the sabot that lets it fit into the gun barrel) is usually a solid slug of tungsten carbide (tungsten's denser than even lead) or even depleted uranium (about as dense as you can get naturally).

Probably be a while.

There aren't that many, and it uses unique ammo. It's not like you can hop down to a local ammo dump and acquire stuff that'll work in this thing. Much like Confederate soldiers getting their hands on the odd Union gun during the Civil War. Only one problem—Union guns had a different chamber and Confederate ammo wouldn't fit.

Mortars...

...aren't nearly as precise as the XM-25's rounds. And their very nature makes them rather difficult to get the range right, especially if the situation calls for a one-shot hit. The XM-25 can also be reliable shot at low angles, whereas mortars tend to be lobbed, making them less than ideal for urban combat.

Give them credit.

The Army's not THAT dumb, and they understand the constraints of budget (thus why modern M-16s can't fire more than a three-shot burst at a time--to conserve ammo). In its current setup, the XM-25 is a SQUAD weapon, not a soldier weapon. Much like having a heavy machine gunner in the squad, now (or instead) you have a specialist gunner wielding this weapon to handle tactical situations.

Another reason for this gun.

It's a little easier for the GroPos to be able to distinguish the friendlies from the enemies since they likely were the first to encounter the enemies and usually have a better idea of their location, not like the chopper crews who fly into the scene later on and have to look from a greater distance.

Thing is...

You have to be somewhere to FIRE the thing. And once your location's pinned down, this thing could come in handy. Hidden inside a building? Airburst through the window. Down in a trench? Airburst overhead. Behind rocks? Airburst behind them. The phrase "you can't hide" seems to be the driving force behind this weapon design.

Rockstar officially announces Grand Theft Auto V

Not really.

It's just that you have to understand how Americans speak dates. We always say "month day, year" the same way that we write it down. Don't know why we switched, but we're used to it, so our date terminology is consistent as far as Americans are concerned. And we consider it succinct: no extra "of"s to say.

Returning to Los Santos?

Give Rockstar props for giving Liberty City (NYC) a lot of attention to detail. Now it seems the same will be done to the sprawl that is Los Santos (LA). As for the LA Noire maps, recall that it took place in the 40's while most GTA games take place in contemporary times (Vice City only went back to the 80's and San Andreas to the 90's). It'll be interesting to see the modern Los Santos they come up with.

Robot resolves Rubik's Cube in record time

I think your paragraph below sums up what some people like us are looking to see:

"Well, if you use that horrible definition for intelligence, no wonder you are unable to apply it to anything. Try this one on for size: the ability to learn -- or in more task-oriented language: the ability to 1) create strategies for dealing with a task, 2) test those strategies in a meaningful manner, 3) select and refine the successful strategies for application to the defined task, and 4) generalize those strategies for analogous tasks as well. Most AI nowadays can actually do 2 and 3 quite well, but need human intervention for 1 and 4. On a scientific note, intelligence defined this way IS measurable (although it takes careful testing and long-term observation) and meaningful."

Solving the cube is cool, but let's see such a device put up against the same cube but with only the basic rules on how the cube works. No advance knowledge of solving techniques: just you, the cube, and the mechanics of it all. If a machine can solve the cube using only that much information (the same amount as anyone seeing the cube for the first time), THEN we'd be witnessing something really interesting. Similarly, if our CSII were to be put up against a cube where the colors are different or are patterned rather than coloured (or better yet, able to determine that the cube has been tampered and is in fact unsolvable) and can determine the right course of action accordingly, then we'd be seeing something novel.

I don't think seeing all six sides are necessary, given the restrictions on the placements of colors once you know the configurations of some of them. I once saw a Commodore program that could solve the cube (albeit, not in the most efficient manner) simply by inputting the spots on the top face. One or two cameras would be all that is needed, with software trained to recognize the colors at specific positions.

World's stealthiest rootkit gets a makeover

Plus there's Encryption.

Routers (in fact, any form of packet sniffer) can do sod all against encrypted connections since (by design) only the endpoints know what is inside.

On top of that...

...how do you know the write-protected media you're using wasn't compromised BEFORE it was write-protected? There have been a few instances of trojaned PRESSED CDs (which are by design read-only) because an unknown trojan somehow managed to get into the gold disc production process and passed everything on into the press.

Then how does Java talk to the CPU?

At SOME point, you're going to need machine language, as that's the ONLY thing the CPU really understands. You eventually have a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" situation in which you have to trust the coder of your Java interpreter/compiler.

Deep inside ARM's new Intel killer

Thing is...

The mobile and tablet markets threaten to be a market DISRUPTOR. The only thing that would scare a market incumbent more than a market competitor is a market disruptor. Because that means the ENTIRE market, not just your share of it, is under threat. Put it this way. What if mobile and tablet computing were to take over the home. Instead of playing games and whatnot on PCs on desks, they took control of their tellys and played games off their tablets through OnLive or the like? Intel can't get a chip in edgewise in the phone and tablet markets, and if people buy more phones and tablets and fewer home PCs, their chip sales start dropping.

And now the enterprise market is looking into tablets. iPads are starting to appear in offices and so on, since they more closely resemble Star-Trek-esque PADDs and make the "paperless office" concept of the 80's more realistic (since you're not just reading the document, you're HOLDING it). And with cloud computing taking off, there is another chance for the thin client (which doesn't require a specific chipset) to take over the office cubible. There goes more Intel chip sales.

About the only stalwart left for Intel is the datacentre, where power efficiency is a key factor but throughput still rules (time is LITERALLY money, aka profits, here--saving energy money doesn't help if you it's offset by lost throughput profits). This is where ARM or some other company of its like still hasn't established itself. If someone can pull off Intel-level amounts of performance per second and STILL draw less power, then Intel better start praying.

And as the article notes, don't expect Microsoft to help Intel this time. With their announcement of supporting ARM in Windows 8, Microsoft is clearly hedging its bet this time.

Oracle updates Java to stop SSL-chewing BEAST

Here's the egg.

Why hasn't Mozilla and company pushed support for TLS 1.1 and such ALREADY? And supporting TLS 1.2 is non-trivial since there are numerous implementation changes such as changing over to SHA-256.

It's TWO problems.

Not only do many browsers not support the latest TLS protocols, bur neither do the servers. And upgrading them to capable servers is non-trivial, presenting a chicken/egg problem: providers won't plunk down for the upgrade unless they HAVE to, but without a critical mass of supporting browsers, they won't FEEL they have to.

Future wars will be over water not fuel, warns Intel sage

Desalination plants.

Desalination plants are not new. Trouble is, they're expensive. As for solar desalination, they've always had problems with scale...and scale (as in efficiency and maintenance). Using solar desalination exclusively for a sprawling metropolis like Los Angeles, California would be, to borrow a term, Brobdingnagian in size, not to mention fickle (as is any weather-dependent process) and potentially dangerous.

Almost.

Bluetooth and USB connections weren't built with security and least privilege in mind. I think Intel envisions that this "PDA of the future" will hold all your personal data but will also be built to limit access to that data. If you tell a rental GPS to look up a contact, it requests the information but only gets back the list. When told to retrieve a contact, the GPS should only get back the address, maybe the phone number if it's call-capable. The necessary infrastructure to enact least privilege on personal data isn't yet in place, and it will be a necessary step towards this level of interactivity.

Intel turns its back on the small screen

Most likely ARM.

Main advantage is that TV makers can pick and choose, with only modest overhead. With so many ARM-based designs from so many outlets, with varying degrees of performance, scale, power efficiency, etc. plus a well-established coding base for the various incarnations and a competitive market, it seems Intel simply became the odd one out in that particular arena.

Stallman: Jobs exerted 'malign influence' on computing

Because that's not in the terms of the copyright.

You pay for a piece of the software. That let you use the piece of software. But you don't know how it's built just as you don't get the blueprints for the motorcar you drive.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is sold at a loss

Price differences.

It may be £200 in the UK, but the same tablet in the US, Wi-Fi only, runs closer to $300. not including S&H nor tax if you're in the wrong state. That's a 50% premium over the ad-supported fire and still $50 more (IINM) over the ad-free version. $300 is still rather the "maybe" territory for most people.

That's not the issue.

The 9 bit is rather a tradition with a bit of psychology mixed in. Most people see $199, equate it to $200 and let it go at that. It's the fact that it's $200 tablet that's NOT a cheap knock-off from K-Mart--compared to the iPads which are SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive--that's turning heads. For most consumer electronics, US-wise, $200 tends to be the magic number that turns it from luxury to common item (then at $100 you drop further to basic necessity--BluRay players are reaching that point as more media starts going BluRay-only).

Pretty much what I figured.

This analysis pretty much reinforces my hypothesis and also explains why Amazon can be cavalier about not locking down the Firmware on its Fire. Selling at a small loss can be seen as an investment into getting more customers. Furthermore, rooted Fires can still visit Amazon's store, since Amazon has an Android App already: both for its store and for the Kindle books.

Would you let your car insurer snoop on you for a better deal?

At least there's an incentive this time.

Putting it into cars wholesale? Not a good idea. But giving drivers an INCENTIVE to do it? Now you're putting the market to use. All we can do now is wait and see how this goes.

Google hits the boozer with own brand of beer

It forbade yeast...

...because yeast wasn't properly understood until the middle of the 19th century. Once Bavarians had a handle of just WHY wort fermented, the law was amended to account for the newfound knowledge. These days, the adherence to the law is seen as a sign of regional pride and tradition, but they don't look down on people who experiment elsewhere and come up with something good. After all, Weissbier (wheat beer) is brewed in Germany, just not in Bavaria.

Neil Armstrong: US space program 'embarrassing'

Debatable.

After all, the Integrated Circuit had been around since the late 50's, before Kennedy took office. There was a cost-savings motive for developing it, since you used less materials and could mass-produce more easily. Many of the space program innovations revolved around low-power electronics due to the limited power capacity of the lunar craft, and low-power tech has only become in vogue pretty recently when phones and tablets produced another need for low-power electronics.

China's patent EXPLOSION could leave West behind

But what happens...

...if the copycat is savvy enough to realize what you're doing and try to LEAPFROG you. IOW, while you work on the second generation, he finds a way to go straight to the THIRD generation?