Posts by Stewart 3

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

It has to be big

Finger's crossed I've yet to find a bad BD. (Although I only have about 20 so far.) My in-laws have 40" HD televisions and, at normal viewing distances, I really don't see much difference between DVD and BD.

I have a JVC HD video projector and an 84" screen. Watching it from 3 metres away is really like being in the cinema. I have both BDs and DVDs of several titles, Zulu, Italian Job, Sin City, Time Bandits, Big Blue, 2001, Where Eagles Dare, Ipcress File and so on. Without exception the BD is superior to the upscaled DVD; and the upscaling on my Philips player is extremely good. (The remastered Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes DVDs look very good when upscaled.)

And, as someone said earlier, Blade Runner on BD has to be seen to be believed.

Some people have criticised BDs for showing grain - sorry, but that's what I want to see - if it's in the film I want to see it on the screen. If the studios start to filter out the grain then we'll lose resolution.

To whomever mentioned that you won't see high def Charlie Chaplin films... why ever not? They were filmed on 35mm nitrate stock, that's generally pretty fine grained and each frame is more than capable of holding more image information than can fit on a BD frame. 16mm film is a different story. I have a large collection of 16mm prints and some are about the same standard as BD but most prints are far inferior.

Authentic Navy rum: Yours for £600 a bottle

When was the last time?

Anyone know when was the last time the rum ration was issued? I remember getting a tot when Prince Andrew got married.

Patchy Windows patching leaves users insecure

FUD Alert!

So the average user needs 75 weekly patches across 22 vendors? Seems a bit steep to me, so I thought I'd see what's on my, very non-average, machine:

* MS Office

* Visual Studio

* Outlook, etc, etc, all Microsoft - so that's 1 vendor.

* Firefox - up to 2 now

* Flash / Acrobat - Adobe - 3, getting closer to the magic 22!

* Java - Sun / Oracle / Whatever this week's owner's called - 4

* Tortoise SVN - 5

* Ankh SVN - 6

* Skype - 7

* Winamp - 8

* 2 FTP clients - 10

* Total Recorder - 11

* Any DVD - 12

* Civilisation IV - 13

Ok I'm struggling now. I guess I could list every application on my pc, but already some of the above aren't what I call security threat vectors.

Hang on, my PIC development tools, say another three to be generous - 16.

We can do this - add in five Firefox addins (although they're already automatically taken care of in Firefox) and we get the magic 22.

Marketing 101 - if you can't find an existing market to exploit then create one. FUD indeed.

Rom-coms, period dramas are rubbish: Mathematical proof

@Paul Powell

"Crack" like TV isn't new. I just bought Danger UXB last week (from 1979) and the wife and I can't stop watching it.

Mind you; it has long scenes, periods of high drama and tension with NO background music to remind us that we're watching high drama and tension and even gets the technology / science / military life right!

Nerd nirvanah!

For those of us too cheap...

If you don't have access to those paid paper sites (damn my dropping my ACM library subscription!) then here's some free and easy information on 1/f:

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/1/f_noise

Oh, and yes, you do need a good story.

Paris 'cause she's... easy but I doubt free

eBay cans free P&P requirement

Stupidity

E-Bay put free postage on thier films hierarchy - this included real film. A 16mm print of a feature length movie can weigh up to 5Kg. That costs around £12 to post.

The only strength EBay have left is their ubiquity. Their only interest is money and volume sellers.

Royal Navy sailors hurl Ronald McDonald into Chilean harbour

Turn it on its head...

While a junior Royal Naval officer on board a mine sweeper we (four juniour officers) had a jolly time in the bars of Liverpool. Come chucking out time we couldn't find a taxi so flagged down a cop car and persuaded them to give us a lift back to the ship.

On the journey we devised a jape that the cops went along with: when we arrived we had the cops turn on their flashing lights and sirens; we all then disgorged from the car, hurling insults at the cops who, in turn swore blue murder at us. By the time we'd got up the gang plank the captain, the XO and every other body on board were waiting for us. We got cheers from the crew and a bollocking from the captain.

Good times!