>Okay I get the fashion on here for hating surface but... What's not to like at the price?
Nothing- just the fact that you can't get it at that price unless you are at either of the events mentioned in the article.
10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
If it doesn't, there is a good chance someone at XDA will port it!
Hehe, I remember trying to buy a train ticket at a small station, under threat of a heavy fine should I board the train without one. Alas, the touch-screen ticket vending machine interpreted rain drops as my intention to travel from Truro to Gloucester by way of Edinburgh with a family of six, so I just swore at it. Sometimes a resistive screen is better -or, heaven forbid, just being able to buy your ticket from the train conductor like a civilised company.
>one problem with the xperia z is that the touchscreen randomly activates underwater, so I got a few still photos >captured along with the video.
Try this, if it gets rolled out for the Xperia Z:
http://www.xperiablog.net/2013/07/02/sony-intros-touch-block-feature-to-prevent-unintentional-touches/
Quite a few members of the public (or at least those who drink in the pub most evenings) have long referred (half-jokingly) to those of us who can use or fix a computer as 'whizzes', 'gurus' or 'geniuses', so I've always seen Apple's adoption of 'Genius Bar' as sharing a nod with their intended users.
It seems to work for that segment - look at the Consumer Association's ('Which?') retailer of the year award, compiled from questionnaires completed by their subscribers. Whether it works for us is irrelevant.
There is also the Xperia ZR, which is more waterproof than the Z (apparently can film video underwater) and appears to have a more rubbery back than the Z (so hopefully minimising wet handed fumbles onto rocks). It' slightly smaller at 4.5".
Unfortunately, it doesn't yet seem to be available in the UK, only some European countries.
I get on well with my Xperia P, which is about 4" diagonal across the screen. However, whilst the battery is better than it was when The Reg reviewed it (due to stamina modes in the ICS and then JB updates- fair play Sony) it's not brilliant.
I get the impression that many Android apps and browsers were developed for 4.5"+ phones - I can read everything, but it's nearly at the limits of my eyesight.
EDIT: It works very as a phone, too. Calls are nice and clear.
Woz: "I think Apple is in one of these waiting periods waiting for the next big direction... ...you can't expect a whole new incredible revolution of a category of existing consumer electronics, you can't expect that every year. If you could have one every year it would be quite a surprise."
Reg: "[Woz] claimed that Apple had gone into a kind of creative coma since its godhead shuffled off his mortal coil."
Okaay...
I've never been a fan of Apple mice - fortunately, I don't often have to use them! And that iMac 'hockey puck'... what were they thinking?
My favourite is a Logitech MX Revolution Darkfield - though I wouldn't have paid the full RRP for it. I mean, the ability to use it on glass is nice and all, but hardly essential to me. However, the button placement and 'hyperscroll' wheel are lovely.
I was a bit naffed off by the poor selection of mice in PC World, recently. Out of the two dozen models on show, all bar a few were generic two-button + scroll wheel models, and overpriced at that.
>Which is weird 'cos if you plugged in a 3 button MS mouse you could use the other buttons just like you can on a PC (or you could, it's a few years since I tried).
The right hand mouse button on a Mac is the same as using the left-hand button + Alt (I think, or is it Ctrl? I can't remember) so support fopr extra-buttoned rodents is easy to implement. Other keys in that area also modify the behaviour of the scroll-wheel (scroll up/down > Scroll left/right, > zoom in/out)
We had an Archimedes in primary school in about 1990- the only thing I remember on it was a a mouse-training jigsaw game, to get us used to the concept of dragging. We didn't really need it- many of us had Amigas, STs or an 8086 with Lemmings.
Up to the next school, and a whole room of Archimedes. RiscOS used 3 mouse buttons by default, IIRC. I can't remember having any difficulty in getting the hang of it, or using word processing or DTP. Two years later and we were all using Mac LCIIIs, with one button. Ah well.
>I’ve been forced to use a 3D CAD puck - my trainer would have loved playing with that word - which was about as intuitive as reversing an articulated lorry while blindfolded.
I've had a brief go with such a 3DConnexions Spacenavigator (a Logitech subsidiary), and didn't get on with. I guess I was just used to a different system of interacting with a 3D model, and it reminded me of the brief time I spent playing with Alias Wavefront- navigating felt like controlling a flight simulator, clumsily!
I'm used to navigating 3D models with mouse + modifier = rotate, scroll wheel = zoom (and one uses zoom out and in to effectively pan). Standard views are associated with a pie menu (hold right button and swipe towards cardinal compass point). This system is better suited to product design than it might be architectural or naval design (where one might wish to move around 'inside' a model of a boat or ship).
Richard Feynman used a chess analogy well: "Imagine you have to deduce the laws of the game from watching a game of chess... eventually you think you have a good grasp of it- how the pieces move... and then a player 'castles'- you haven't seen this behaviour before!"
Dang, I never completed Gods... I got as far as the last boss battle - a a giant serpent dragon thing - and slung a load of axes at him... but no cigar.
I don't think I ever got past the second level of Xenon 2, at least without using the invincibility cheat ('F7' at the VGA/ EGA selection screen, then 'i' in-game)
>Alas, it's all bulky desktops or not-quite-top-notch notebooks today...
There are 'net-tops' (i.e, PCs about the size of a Mac Mini) and the recent Intel reference platform for similar things... get some glue, some straps and some foam rubber and you might not be far off the thing you want.
Ben Heck is known to many of us as the man who creates game controllers for people with only one hand, or making XBOX 360 laptops... however, he was making his own pinball machine a while back.
If you have a love of hardware hacking, take a look:
http://benheck.com/
His latest projects include a 3D-printed Spam-saver lid (the luncheon meat, not the unwanted email) and a PC keyboard with analogue WASD keys for gaming...
>A single hour of flight in an F-22 costs $68,362 and the aircraft requires a month's rebuilding after 300 hours in the air. Curse you, Congress!
Yeah, but wouldn't any time an F-22 spent 'escorting' a passenger jet be time that pilots would otherwise spend in training? Also, I would imagine that an F-22 is overkill for such a task- surely there is a cheaper, slower (but still fast enough) 'plane for the job?
>We don't hear much talk about getting more women working on building sites, plumbing or lorry driving (though obviously there are some who do these jobs) and we hear even less about getting more men into nursing and teaching.
There has long been a campaign in the UK to get more men working as primary school teachers, so as to give young children (not all of whom have a father living at home) a more balanced view of adults.
Birmingham council has decided that it is unfair that dinner ladies are not paid as much road sweepers, because each role is heavily staffed by women and men respectively.
I didn't take the conclusion of the Media Show as Snowden's leaks being too technical... a conclusion isn't their style. Curious that all the media attention is focused on the fate of a single man, as opposed to looking at the implications of what he leaked.
Probably the reason that the reaction to Snowden's leaked info hasn't raised too many eyebrows is that most people kinda suspected it was all going on anyway.
The response given in the case Arkell Vs Pressdam was when Private actually had evidence, as opposed to hearsay... normally they are happy to publish and be damned. There is a good tradition of 'Eye-told-you-so, as they are often vindicated years or decades after being successfully sued. l Vs Pressdam was when Private actually had evidence, as opposed to hearsay... normally they are happy to publish and be damned. There is a good tradition of 'Eye-told-you-so, as they are often vindicated years or decades after being successfully sued.
>despite the fact that France itself had been the target of terrorism directed by the Gaddafi government in Libya.
Whatever. Too much smoke to tell. http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=in_the_back&article=122
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/hes_behind_you
"HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT
TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD
"Things come and go in the news cycle like waves of fever. A year ago Colonel Gaddafi was killed and an avalanche of camera phone footage of his last minutes was played again and again on the news channels. Then it stopped - and Gaddafi disappeared off into the dark.
"What remains is all the footage recording Gaddafi's forty year career as a global weirdo. But the closer you look at the footage and what lies behind it - you begin to discover an odd story that casts a rather unflattering light on many of the elites in both the British and American establishments."
>I've got no idea what that killer app might be, sadly.
How 'killer' that application needs to be (the benefit) depends upon the cost (retail price, appearance, battery life etc) of implementing it.
There are quite a few very useful things a 'connected' watch can do, without even having to boast a pixel-based display. Examples are 'Find my phone', 'warn me when my phone loses contact', 'mute my phone/reject call', ''pause music / skip track'.
Information that can be communicated to the user by means of just a watch hand include: direction of travel, speed, various notifications, minutes to next train etc.
My preference would be for simple 'connected' features included in a conventional, good looking watch.
>I have no problem with the concept of wearable tech and I'm sure in time it will get to the point where it's actually stylish and functional, at which point it will become ubiquitous.
Terry - take a look at the Citizen Bluetooth watch. It resembles many other 'chronometer' watches.
It doesn't have a alpha-numeric display, but uses vibration and then the second-hand to indicate what message has come to the phone. One could imagine a more advanced version that uses the second-hand to guide the wearer towards GPS waypoints, for example.
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/02/citizen-eco-drive-proximity/
Apparently it has similar disconnection issues to the first Sony smartwatch, though.
The latest Android update bought in Bluetooth Low Energy support - though only a handful of Android handsets have the hardware at the moment - bringing it in line with iOS and Win Pho 8.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/21/4452488/amd-sparks-x86-transition-for-next-gen-game-consoles
" EA Sports boss Andrew Wilson says that one reason none of its next-gen sports games are coming to PC is because Microsoft and Sony's new game consoles are actually more powerful than many PCs in a very specific, subtle way: "How the CPU, GPU, and RAM work together in concert,"
"That might sound suspiciously vague, but we spoke to AMD and it's actually true. The AMD chips inside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One take advantage of something called Heterogeneous Unified Memory Access (HUMA), GOOD FOR GAMING, GOOD FOR AMDwhich allows both the CPU and GPU to share the same memory pool instead of having to copy data from one before the other can use it."
>For starters I can't understand why the GTA team didn't try a new theatre i.e. an Italian, French or Asian inspired open world, instead its west coast CA yet again!
I for one always wanted a sci-fi style GTA... stealing futuristic vehicles like the racing craft found in WipeOut, or some Mechs.
>Unfortunately a lot of Indie developers are being forced to go small screen to stay in business, helped by the crushing Hollywood system.
Many developers - including people like John D. Carmack of iD Software - are welcoming the ability of indie developers to create games without having a budget of $millions. There seem to be plenty of 'AAA' titles available for consoles, despite a rise in 'casual gaming' - be it tablets or Nintendos.
>" But then I ask myself whether your average PS4 or Xbox One gamer – those brought up on a diet of Call of Duty and Fifa – would readily lap up the likes of Mario, et al?"
Some of us like some variety in our gaming diet... and households with several consoles in them are far from rare, especially in shared flats. Many PS gamers will have fond memories of GoldenEye 64, Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, Mario 64 or Wario Stadium Soccer.