Posts by Dave 126

Trips to Mars may be OFF: The SUN has changed in a way we've NEVER SEEN

Re: Why 400 days for men and 300 days for women?

>This is why there is a menopause, only so many are made and then halted in Meiosis.

Very few mammals exhibit the menopause.... it basically just us and whales. Why would it be a evolutionary advantage for a female to stop producing offspring? Because she can play a role in caring for and educating her existing children and grandchildren, if she extends her life by not wasting resources by menstruating.

What does this tell us about the social life of whales?

Hey Apple, we're gonna tailor Swift as open source – indie devs throw down gauntlet

Unlike Clang and LLVM, the Swift-specific parts of the compiler toolchain are not open source. Apple has the resources and influence to ensure the success of Swift even if it is the only company using it at scale (cf. Objective-C). Nevertheless, powerful factions within the company are undoubtedly in favor of making Swift an open source project. The push to release Yosemite and iOS 8 has likely taken precedence so far, but I expect this issue to be revisited.

- http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/23/#shape-of-the-future

Mars needs women, claims NASA pseudo 'naut: They eat less

Re: Women are smaller, and thus consume less

No logic escaped the author - she was drawing upon the conclusions of existing research. Why did you assume she wasn't? Other factors in women's favour include research into psychological suitability to be being cooped up with their peers for months on end.

Re: It definitely makes sense

Or even selectively breed some squid to be be very intelligent... They are smaller than us, have very good eyes, and their aquatic environment may help with high G-forces.

- Apologies to S. Baxter.

Xperia Z3: Crikey, Sony – ANOTHER flagship phondleslab?

Re: Five Hundred and Forty Nine???

The Z3 Compact can be had for under £400, a fair saving on its RSP. No doubt the big Z3 can be had for less than its RSP too.

Re: Watertight charging

The official charging dock is around £20, but I've seen 3rd party versions for around £7. At least the headphone socket doesn't require any rubber bung.

Hopefully waterproofing will become a standard feature, just as is on wristwatches.

EDIT - Sony will sell you a Wireless Charging case, if you want one.

Re: Great battery

The review said the phone would get will into it's third day without a charge, and that it looped video for 12 hours.

The Compact version performs similarly, by all accounts - it has a smaller battery because it has a smaller, lower res (but still more than sharp enough) screen.

Apparently, the Z3 Compact is less slippery than it's bigger brother and more comfortable to hold. Many reviews consider it an even better device, and it'll be my next phone.

Doctor Who and the Dalek: 10-year-old tests BBC programming game

Re: FORWARD 20; LEFT 90; BEEP

The hardware to make a 'Turtle' is incredibly cheap these days. When I look at some Chinese websites that sell quadcopters, motors, sensors and the like, I keep thinking 'Now is a great time to be

an eight year old boy'.

I can't comment about 8yo girls, because I've never been one.

Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?

Re: I totally agree with mandatory voting....

Compulsory voting:

Candidate Bloggs stands as prospective MP for the Don't Vote It Only Encourages Them Party.

Candidate Bloggs gets all the votes of those who don't want to vote.

Bloggs becomes MP.

The point is that the introduction of compulsory voting would change the selection of candidates you could vote for - so saying the current crop of prospective MPs are all useless is not a water-tight argument against compulsory voting. There may well be valid arguments against, but that isn't one of them.

Re: Utopian drivel

>A more pressing concern is that not voting is a valid choice. I didn't have any acceptable choices for MP at the last general election, so I didn't cast a vote for any of the candidates.

Yeah, but then a consequence of compulsory voting might be that there would then be a candidate you could vote for.

Re: That explains it...

What Arnaut the less said.

And: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell for his influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (type theory) and philosophy.

Also: Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel for this classic letter:

"My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.

We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr, H.M. Ambassador"

Aboard the GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP, there's a Mobe and a Slab and a TELLYBOX

>So the tablet has half the storage of the phone? Why?

Tablets, unlike phones, tend to live within range of a local network and media servers etc

One survey suggested that 3/4s of iPads rarely leave the owner's house. It seems reasonable to apply this finding to other tablets of a similar size, and surmise that the tablet can call upon media over the local network.

It would appear that Google don't hand over the keys to Lenovo until later this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility#Acquisition_by_Lenovo

Radiohead(ache): BBC wants dead duck tech in sexy new mobes

Re: Dead ducks

My old man got hold of an amateur English translation of an old French cookbook. One recipe is priceless:

After skinning and eviscerating your badger, place it in a fast flowing stream for forty-eight hours to degrease it...

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, 'badger hams' were eaten until fairly recently on the banks of the river Severn. I cannot comment on how much cider one needs to have drunk beforehand.

Vanmoof Electrified Bike: Crouching cyclist, hidden power

Re: Like them

Suspension adds weight, true, but it allows for lighter wheel rims to be used, saving rotational mass. When tyres deform to absorb shocks, they increase their rolling resistance. The suspension will also help the mountings for the heavy battery last longer.

Front-wheel drive

I've had a go an electric push bike where the battery lived on the rear pannier rack and the motor was in the rear hub. My mate had removed any limiter it might have been sold with.

Due to the weight distribution and raw torque, one had to be careful not to pull a wheelie when starting off.

Re: Err....a fly in the lycra?

Yeah, UK legislation can get in the way of new takes on personal transport. For example, BMW made a scooter with a roll cage, the C1, the idea being that you didn't need the hassle of donning leathers and a helmet. UK law says that that a helmet is still a legal necessity when riding a C1, even though wearing a helmet would be dangerous due to risk of neck strain in the event of a collision.

Many countries deemed the use of seatbelts in conjunction with wearing a helmet to be unsafe. The added strain on the riders neck from the added weight of the helmet could cause significant injury to the restrained rider even in a low speed head-on collision. Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Israel and Spain authorities were quick to allow an exception to the helmet law for the C1. However, poor C1 sales in the United Kingdom may in part be attributable to the British government's refusal of BMW's request to change helmet regulations for C1 riders.

Some cities in the USA placed an onus on employers to provide off-street storage for bicycles - fear of theft deters some people from cycling to work.

Jony Ive: Flattered by rivals' designs? Nah, its 'theft'

Re: Hypocrite!

>I would've loved to have seen what Jonny Ive came up with if he only 'applied' Dieter's principles without seeing any of his work.

Ive was first known for the Bondi Blue iMac. It doesn't superficially resemble any of Rams' work, though it follows Rams' principles.

The iMac was a product of its time. 3D solid-modelling CAD and Simulation software matured so that more 'organic' forms, such as the iMac's case, could be modelled and manufactured. Without these CAD tools, the iMac's development time woud have been much longer.

Ive's first product to resemble a Ram's object was the iPod. The constraints were the two major internal components - the HDD and required battery. The back of it resembles a cigarette case, and the front is largely defined by the user interface, i.e the screen and wheel.

Anyway, Rams wasn't the only 'form engineer' of the 1950s... check out this Zeiss Jena Werra MK1 camera:

http://leavemehere.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/werra/

Re: Function, Form, Design

>function to a large degree has to dictate form.

> Very square corners may not be very appealing to look at and may catch on clothing so it's probably going to be rounded.

Basically, a cigarette case lays the template for items designed to be carried in a pocket.

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Ultrabook flexes new 'Watchband' BENDO hinges

Re: Power and video signals

The mechanism means all links move equally, ensuring that the ribbon cables are never bent through too small a radius. A good image of it is at 15 seconds into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCmy-_OOEY Cunning.

Normal laptops prevent the cables from being pinched simply by using larger hinges.

AndroidScript returns to Google Play Store: Ad giant YIELDS TO THE MIGHT OF EL REG

Re: Droid®Script

Curiously, 'android' refers specifically to robots that are designed to look like humans (think Blade Runner, Ash or Bishop from Alien/s, or Asimov's R. Daneel Olivaw), yet the logo that Google and ASOP use is a very roboty-looking robot, like a Soviet-era tin-metal wind-up toy.

We prefer the term 'Artificial Human'.

US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: US is losing science race

Re: Seems Degrasse-Tyson is a bit unclear on what "science" is.

>Seems Degrasse-Tyson is a bit unclear on what "science" is.

>It's not product development. It's not even innovation of entirely new products.

Yeah thanks, the rest of here are aware already aware that science is not technology. However, we are also aware of the nuanced interrelationship between the two.

Apple KILLS SUPER MARIO. And Zelda. And Sonic

External controllers

Apple have been in a better position than most to create an add-on games controller for their devices (because there are more iphones of a certain model sold than any one Android phone) but they have never bothered. They have sold plenty of phones without needing to so sweeten the deal for gamers... though they make a song and dance about their graphics API 'Metal'.

You'd be better off with an Android device that can support PlayStation 3/4 BT controllers, if you really want to play old Nintendo titles.

Brace yourself for a 12-inch Apple maxiPAD – probably... maybe... ish

Unlikely, because it is a 'tool for a niche job' kit, but:

There is evidently enough of a market for Wacom to make a 123" Windows 8 digitiser tablet, aimed at people who are likely to be OSX users:

http://cintiqcompanion.wacom.com/CintiqCompanion/en/

The only OSX equivalent at the moment is an even pricier 'bring your own MacBook' Modbook:

http://www.modbook.com/

Trio share 2014 Nobel Prize for cracking internal GPS of the brain

Re: I am impressed,,, very impressed.

Various scenarios have been explored in SF, includingb ut not limited to:

1. Asteroid renders Earth uninhabitable. Humanity is wiped out. No brains to study.

2. Brains are studied, and minds transferred to a substrate. Galaxy is explored by 'humankind' without the inconvenience of bodies.

3. We study ourselves, and decide we aren't worth the raw elements.

4. We explore space, and some aliens give us a better understanding of ourselves and our minds. Clarke.

5. TROTM. Singularity. Neuromancer. Whatever. Cameron. Gibson.

6. We invent robot hookers. Aldiss.

Is Apple incubating a Macbook, iPad bastard child?

Re: The "giant iPad" rumors have been around for several years

You plumb your phone into the TV, connect your BT mouse and keyboard, settle down on the sofa.... and then someone rings you up.

Hmmmm.... not sure.

Reading websites on the first generation of netbooks was a shit experience, due to the screen aspect ratio and poor resolution. It might have been almost okay if the screen rotated through 90º to 'portrait', but they didn't.

Ubuntu Unity was a reasonable attempt top address poor hardware choices - i.e, it would allow a vertical taskbar to make up for overly wide screens. Maybe its' a better idea to just start with a screen ratio that was better fit for purpose, no?

Unity also had an end-goal of working across a range of UI paradigms - i.e phone, tablet, laptop, TV with IR remote control. Ambitious... and at the mercy of 3rd party developers, too.

Apple's way is to have a UI that is suited to the hardware it is running on. Individual documents can be worked on across devices by either saving to the cloud or by some of these new OSX and iOS 'continuity' features.

Interesting times.

BTW, don't worry about what Steve Jobs has said. He once responded to a question about next iPod after the 'iPod Photo' doing video... "Yeah sure, and the next version will make you toast as well". The next iPod did indeed play back video.

Re: This sounds like Windows 8 territory

OSX has already incorporated ideas from iOS's user interface. I'm thinking of multi-touch gestures - on Macbooks or desktop Macs with the touchpad peripheral. .

However, Apple introduced these gestures without removing more traditional means of user interaction, such as Menus or Keyboard Shortcuts.

Chap runs Windows 95 on Android Wear

Why the negativity? Surely many of us here have derived some satisfaction from getting something to work - even if it shouldn't? The end result isn't useful, but the process has been a challenge and has honed his technical skills and perseverance.

You might as well not bother attempting a crossword in a newspaper today - y'know, 'cos it's easier to wait until the paper prints the answers tomorrow.

'Apple Watch' sapphire glass maker files for bankruptcy protection

Re: Speculation

if you make almost anything thin enough then it can bend a bit without much drama. The is no reason why the sapphire cannot be made very thin and then bonded to a tougher substrate - in theory . In practice may be very different, though.

Nokia Lumia 735: Ignore the selfie hype, it's a grown-up phone

Re: Twitter notifications

>(Yes I know the Xperia models exist, but even they have port covers)

The Sony headphone sockets are now waterproofed without the need for port covers.

The Xperias can be charged up without opening the microUSB port cover by means of two contact pins on the phone - a 3rd party magnetic cable is £8, and the official Sony dock is around £20.

Steve Jobs makes world a better place FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Re: @Not Terry Wogan Finding a dolphin who'll let you swim with and bugger him...."

Flippr?

You don't have to be mad to work at Apple but....

Re: TO THE MAX!

Short periods of stress can be good, especially working up to a deadline. There is a sense of camaraderie and focus on delivering the project, even if people are going a little bit crazy. Once the project is delivered, there's a sense of elation and a chance to unwind, which fgeels all the sweeter because you feel you've earned it.

However, being stressed for an indefinite period of time is not good.

Re: Further efficiency gains ahead?

>If you run out of toilet paper, you can ask Sirii where to get more, but I suspect she may respond "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that".

You jest, but Siri's pre-Apple 'character' may well have given that response:

Back then, Siri boasted an even more irreverent tone -- and a more robust set of skills. Like fiction writers dreaming up a character, Dag Kittlaus, Siri's co-founder and chief executive, and Harry Saddler, a design expert, had carefully crafted the assistant's attitude and backstory. It was to be "otherworldly," "vaguely aware of popular culture" and armed with a "dry wit," Kittlaus says.

Ask it about gyms, and Siri sent back a mocking, “Yeah, your grip feels weak.” Ask, “What happened to HAL?” -- the brainy (and murderous) talking computer that starred in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 thriller "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- and it delivered a sullen, “I don’t want to talk about it." In those days, Siri still had “fuck” in its lexicon.

That was before Apple washed Siri’s mouth out with soap and curbed many of its talents, even as it endowed the assistant with new gifts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/siri-do-engine-apple-iphone_n_2499165.html

Apple is GOLDBRICKING IT: BEHOLD the iPad Glister-Slab

>...what does the iWatch actually do?

Like any computer, it depends on the software. The hardware - touch screen, rotary dial, two buttons, microphone, speaker, vibrator, sensors, CPU, Bluetooth radio - are available for the software to use. Like the iPad, there probably isn't one 'killer application', but it may be that there are enough little applications to make it worthwhile for some users. Time will tell.

Apple demoed an American Airlines app that displays gate information and departure time - potentially handy if your hands are full of luggage.

GPS navigation whilst on foot. This would certainly be more convenient than holding a phone up.

Remote control for your iTV or iPhone.

>Will you get one?

I'd personally wait for version 2, just based on the history of first gen iDevices (iPod, iPhone, iPad).

>How does it differ from other smartwatches?

Tight integration with the iOS ecosystem, and a large R&D budget. Some features seem pretty smart - such as displaying a text message, then extracting from it three plausible replies for the user to send back.

Coming to a theater near you: the TETRIS MOVIE

Tenuous link to a plot...

What many people know as the 'Tetris Tune' from the Gameboy version is a nineteenth-century Russian folk song that tells of a meeting between a peddler and a girl, in which they haggle over the price of goods in a veiled metaphor for courtship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korobeiniki

But yeah, I can't work out any link to falling bricks.

However, a system that allowed customers to take part in a Tetris tournament on a big cinema screen (perhaps by using their smartphones as controllers) could be fun!

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

Re: The problem with this article...

>Oil is cheap because it is pulled out of the ground in enormous scale.... but the minute you massively reduce the scale, the per unit costs go up.

Could you expand upon that? My assumption would have been that 1000 oil rigs can produce oil at much the same unit cost as 2000 rigs. For sure, if you did it suddenly there would be the extra costs of making redundancy payments to staff, or employing a caretaker staff on 'mothballed' rigs... but if you simply drilled fewer new wells over time, I'm not clear on why the unit cost would rise much.

Cheers

Internet of Things? Hold my beer, I got this: ARM crafts OS to rule them all

Re: We all saw this coming...

Licensing seems be working very well for ARM so far.

Cable guy, Games of Thrones chap team up to make Reg 'best sci-fi film never made' reject

On TV Series Structure

The two best TV shows of the year have been True Detective and Fargo. Both are a stand-alone series of 8 or 10 episodes, both have no possibility of a sequel. As a viewer, you can commit to them safe in the knowledge that they will not be cancelled later on, or stagnate into boringness.

Beginning, Middle, END. With some genuine surprises along he way.

Re: The Martian

>David Lynch's Dune. Dune has crap script, crap acting and crap special effects,

Oh, but the set design and wardrobe are gorgeous!

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

Re: Here we go again..

Hmm, I never considered stipulating in my 'Living Will' the software used in the medical equipment used to treat me when unconscious. I just figured I'd leave it to testing by the regulatory authorities and the medical professionals treating me.

More seriously, I'm not sure that the cost of hardware is the limitation it once was for having a Windows-based embedded system. There may well be other reasons to not use Windows, but these days hardware is pretty cheap.

Winx...

...sounds better than Wince, I guess.

EDIT: Since writing the above, I googled 'Winx'. SFW, but heck. An Italian animated series about fairies with strangely proportioned legs, rendered in more pastel colours than iOS 7.

What's a Chromebook good for? How about running PHOTOSHOP?

` Photoshop is a Swiss army knife.... not all models include a device for getting stones out of horses hooves*, because not all users need it.

*Actually, the rounded spike is for splicing lengths of rope together, I believe. Its often seen on naval knives, and horses and stones aren't too common on boats.

Japan develops robot CHEERLEADERS which RIDE on BALLS

Re: let me be the first to say that

Those who don't had better invest in a box of drawing pins.

Re: while it may look cheesy

>it would be even more impressive if these bots could sense, communicate, coordinate and execute autonomously

That has been looked into already - see the TED Talk 'Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly ... and cooperate' below. It shouldn't be too difficult to incorporate Prof. Kumar's techniques into these ball robots. The sensing hardware is almost at the 'off the shelf' level - (i.e MS Kinect et al), plus mesh networking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ErEBkj_3PY

BENDY iPhone 6, you say? Pah, warp claims are bent out of shape: Consumer Reports

Re: Headline should read "Note 3 Twice as Strong as iPhone 6"

>You can be certain that Apple will wriggle out of repairing / replacing these sub-standard efforts.

How do you square your assertion with the results of customer service surveys conducted by the UK's Consumer Association (see above), which, like Consumer Reports, is subscription funded?

i.e 'Links please'.

Re: Laboratory Street

The Consumer Association in the UK is similar - its monthly magazine is called 'Which?'. It has no advertising, and is financed by its subscribers.

They test all sorts of consumer goods, and they explain their methods which often involve a lot of real testing in controlled conditions. Recommendations are made, but the results of the tests and specifications of all tested products are always shown in a matrix.

Its subscribers give Which? a group of consumers with varied and broad interests who are willing to participate in surveys. They know that this information will not be used to sell stuff to them. Instead, the information will be processed and given back to them.

Such surveys include customer service from retailers, or the reliability of products.

It would be very difficult for any one company to 'game' these surveys, due to the range of products and services the subscribers are quizzed about.

How the FLAC do I tell MP3s from lossless audio?

Emotional response

1.

Sometimes it doesn't matter a damn. Recordings of Fats Waller will make me dance and smile, despite the limited dynamic range and technical clarity of the original 1930s recordings. However, the arrangement of the music and the role of the band (piano, gypsy guitar, trumpet, vocals) are more than clear enough to impart the emotion of the music.

2.

Big speakers. We don't just listen with our ears. We can feel music through our bodies at louder volumes. In addition, we can sense frequencies below 20Khz through our skeletons. Witness deaf percussion players, and the presence of church organ pipes at sub 20Khz frequencies (Stephen J Gould notes this in his essay 'An earful of jaw' since our inner-ear bones evolved from our jaw bones). Generally, I find that with larger speakers, it is possible to hear the music clearly, and at the same time have a conversation without straining.

Re: One thing which hasn't been mentioned re MP3 encoding

>Third point: the DAC on a phone or laptop is unlikely to be anything other than the cheapest the maker could get away with.

Some versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 had Wolfson DACs, and the LG G2 is said to be good, too (and LG contributed to the Android Open Source Project the ability to play 192Khz 24bit FLAC natively)

Re: Records and WAV

Storage is cheap, but so is processing power- you may as well encode to FLAC, since the output is bit-for-bit identical to WAV, and you get meta-data too.