Posts by Dave 126 10841 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
More likely to be anodised with something hard and goldie-looking. Titanium Nitride would fit the bill (you'll probably have seen this treatment on some drill bits), except it looks more goldie than gold (and thus trashy). The UK bicycle component company Middleburn used to make chain rings with some tasteful hard-anodised colours, if earthy colours were your thing.
> not sure it should be immortalized in Lego bricks :)
Neither is LEGO the company, which is why these pieces are printed by a third-party company. They also offer LEGO military figures, LEGO bongs (to the scale of LEGO mini-figures, so non-functional obviously), LEGO zombies and tiles that resemble this {>} and other Reg-like cons.
>Now if one of those "Earth II" planets was within a human lifetime at say 0.1c
Alas, the length of a 'human lifetime' may well be shortened by the journey beyond the protection of the Earth's magnetosphere. I suppose future technology might allow us to shield the occupants of spacecraft with energy fields, or repair their DNA on the fly...
['Songs of Distant Earth' by Arthur C Clarke]
Good advice there Mr Roper, unfortunately the Windows 7 Taskbar has a tendency to pop up at the merest provocation ( Such-and-such wants updating, Autoplay when i only plugged my phone in to charge, etc) and obscures the bottom status bar of any application I'm actually using. If anyone can tell me how to prevent 'notifications' from causing the Taskbar to pop-up, I would be grateful!
(To pre-empt one solution: Nothing against Linux, but it isn't suitable for me)
Argonaut... didn't they do a game on rails called 'Creature Shock'? I would consult Wikipedia, but I'm drunk and it sems more fun to ask you guys. Certainly the Argonaut name is familiar from the time I used to read PC Zone. And wasn't there some parachute simulation game out around the same time as Starfox? Skywings 3D or somesuch?
Yeah, i remember playing Nascar on a 386 and 486 linked by a null modem cable... all but one of the tracks was a boring ellipse, though. yYu could paint your cars different colours, and the car damage was pretty impressive for the time, especially detached wheels bouncing down the track. Setting one's car to 'indestructible' and speeding the wrong way down the track was always a hoot... perhaps we could have an antique code show dedicated to the fun we got from abusing computer games?
"In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.
With good reason.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr, in http://inthesetimes.com/article/903/i_love_you_madame_librarian
He also made the same point in his book Man Without a Country , but didn't use the word 'almost'.
So it goes.
I was just recalling Sgt. Joseph Derby, who released the photos of abuse by US military staff and contractors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He released the photos through the 'proper' channel, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, and was promised anonymity. However, Donald Rumsfeld saw fit to 'thank' Sgt. Derby on television, whilst he was still on base surrounded by those he had implicated. His wife and family were then harassed back in the US by members of the public.
Martin Campbell directed the 1985 BBC series Edge of Darkness, which was apparently well thought of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness#Broadcast_and_critical_reception
Continuing with the optimism, Battlestar Gallactica was well served by a remake.
I'm not putting money on this new Blake's 7 being great, but thought that I might try and balance some of the negativity here!
>without some unique verifiable means of identifying them
I'd have thought that my long-standing Google account, or Android phone would satisfy that requirement. I wouldn't say that I had no intention of signing up, but rather the whole point of a trial is to determine whether I might want to. The selection of artists available is an important differentiator from Spotify or Sony's offering, and I couldn't see any immediate link to that information.
On an off topic but audio-related note: I'm glad to see a new flagship Android phone (hint, not HTC, Samsung, Sony or Motorola) being released week with hardware support for 192Khz 24bit audio playback, and with appropriate APIs to make up for Android's native audio limitations. Existing portable solutions seem to be either unwieldy (iDevice plus camera kit plus external DAC) or expensive (Colorfly).
Thought I'd have a look, just to get the gist of which artists they have available (Spotify has some curious omissions). "Ohh, 30 day free trial" I thought. Clicked 'next', but oh no: It's the old 'give your card details for the free trial and maybe you'll forget to cancel before we start charging you' game.
https://play.google.com/about/music/
>But wouldn't his comments be taken as breeching the gag order? I'm sure the Gestapo FBI is already on it's way to have a chat.
tkioz's comment above pre-dates mine above by more than an hour. (his strike-through formatting doesn't survive copy-paste)
>"In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were."
- Kurt Vonnegut Junior - http://inthesetimes.com/article/903/i_love_you_madame_librarian
"In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were."
- Kurt Vonnegut Junior - http://inthesetimes.com/article/903/i_love_you_madame_librarian
Remember the shameful blackening of his name Fox News indulged in after his death? We were always taught not to speak ill of the dead.
"She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view."
Trout paused again.
"The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about," said Trout. "One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells. "He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?" Trout asked me. I said I didn't. "He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!' " - Timequake, KVJ
Attributed to Mel Brooks: "f I got a paper cut, that’s a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy."
Or Homer Simpson: "Man fall over. Funny."
We enjoy watching John Cleese as Basil Fawlty in an apoplectic fit. We also enjoy watching bad things happening to bad or stupid people, or to stupid bad people. An example would be the Darwin Awards, or the drunken Swansea idiots who decide to abuse a transvestite - who turns out to be a professional cage fighter dressed up for a stag night; the ensuing natural justice was captured on CCTV and is available on YouTube.
I spent real money Daikatana when I was a student, partly because of the Romero name, partly because it ran on NT 4.0. Silly me. I gave up after the second chapter, obviously my time spent playing Goldeneye on the N64 had taught me nothing about the idiocy of non-player allies.
At least Carmack tried something different with Rage, and didn't just use some off-the-shelf game engine - even though reviews suggest it didn't live up to its promise.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/performance-preview-the-moto-x-sports-a-great-gpu-respectable-cpu/
"I'll echo what we said in our hands-on with the Moto X: this is a fine phone, but we're ultimately left wondering what the fuss is about. It's plenty fast, if not exceptionally so. It has a few neat software tweaks, but nothing that would prompt us to throw our Galaxies or Nexuses in the trash. It starts at a same-old-same-old $199 on-contract price just like most flagship Android phones. Customizable backs are all well and good, but if that's your phone's killer feature, you might need to think of some more ideas."
That's kind of the idea. Screen was chosen for better battery life (AMOLED can light up pixels selectively, so checking notifications uses less power), CPU ditto - but apparently is fast enough to let the phone run smoothly.
I think the idea is that Moto are trying to tightly wed the hardware to their version of Android and sell it people who want things to 'just work', as opposed to the spec-hungry modding crowd.
This is a phone with mid-range components at a high-end price. However, the gist seems to be that the screen and processor have been chosen for better battery life. There are power-saving tricks: only part of the AMOLED screen is lit up to show notifications, for example.
It's an attempt to make a 'one size fits all' Android phone, suitable for the sort of people whop wold have previously bought an iPhone.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4578890/this-is-the-moto-x
>Tomshardware, for example is often covered with them [synthetic benchmarks]
Yeah, But Tom's put their synthetic benchmarks in context, and always alongside 'real-world' tasks.... so if they are testing Workstation GPUs, for example, they run tasks in a variety of CAD and transcoding applications. If they are testing CPUs, they might run standard tasks in Photoshop and other productivity apps. Gaming hardware is tested on popular titles such as Crysis and Skyrim, since different games tax CPUs and GPUs differently. Seems reasonable.
AC's comments might seem harsh for your average stoner carrying a Wishbone Ash album, but these idiots were metal thieves carrying a machete - of the type that think nothing of causing costly damage and inconvenience for a few dollars worth of copper:
>Reuben Miller, the owner of nearby Aacme Transmissions, said he confronted the man near the business on Mount View Lane shortly after noon because he recognized him from surveillance footage taken Sunday.
In that footage, Miller said, the man was allegedly seen cutting cords from a washer and dryer outside the business and leaving with them.
"I said, 'You are stealing my stuff,'" Miller said. "He said, 'I don't have time for you. I'm going to the hospital,' and pulled out a machette."
Miller said he punched the man, who also had a hatchet, once or twice. The man eventually continued up Mount View Lane toward Nevada, he said.
>Similarly, Android 4.3 introduces support for Bluetooth Smart Ready – aka the Low Energy portion of the Bluetooth 4.0 spec – but only on supported devices, which so far include the Nexus 4 and the new Nexus 7 only.
According to the wikipedia Bluetooth entry, some Samsung devices such as the Note 2 have Bluetooth LE hardware, so presumably Samsung will support it their next software update - especially if they plan to release a 'smartwatch'. Ditto some Nokia phones and Microsoft tablets. The previous lack of BLE in Android might be why some of the existing smartwatches (such as those from Casio G-Shock and Citizen) currently only support iDevices.
That happened to my new camera last weekend- it was too hot to leave it in direct sunlight, so I placed it under my jacket on the opposite bench. A beer later, and my friend picked up my jacket to hand it to me and the camera hit the floor... fortunately, it still works, and I can't find a dent or scratch on it. The official case for it is far too pricey, so and being an unusual size generic pouches are too small for it.... so I'll have a rummage amongst the 35mm cameras in a charity shop and buy one for its pouch!
Old Nexus 7 took some XDA malarkey to have it read memory sticks, but worked with keyboards etc. Old Nexus 4 was made by LG and didn't have USB OTG in any way. Some AMA on Reddit suggests that the new Nexus 7 has OTG - at least in hardware- since it appears to be supplying power to connected devices.
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/30434/slimport-summit-2013-coverage-what-is-slimport-/index.html
for what looks like a reasonable covering of Slimport basics...
Also,
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/google-announces-new-chrome-device-to-get-video-streams-to-your-tv/
is a $35 device that allows you to stream video over WiFi from a avariety of platforms.
>Unobtainium Glass
"Man-made sapphire could replace Gorilla Glass as the material of choice for scratch-and-crack-resistant mobile phone screens in the near future, according to a recent speculative piece from MIT Technology Review.
"Having had a little wander around the relevant places and a few chats with people who would know, I'd say that it's actually not just possible but highly likely. "
- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/02/gorilla_glass_ipads/
>Does stuff I do in Android seamlessly integrate into the Ubuntu side?
Probably yes, seeing as such techniques have been used for some time on virtual machines. If you download VMWare Player (free as in beer) for example, you will be given the option to download the VMWare 'Helper' tools, which allow you to do things such as copy-paste between windows, regardless of whether said windows are programs running on the Host OS or the Guest OS.
I do have a little sympathy for your cynicism- this proposed Ubuntu setup requires the user to carry a micoHDMI or USB MHL cable, plus Bluetooth mouse and keyboard- which are bulkier than the actual phone. If you're resigned to carrying those odds and sods, you might as well carry a separate Linux machine too- perhaps one of those little 'inline' jobbies the size of a USB stick.... that way you can still make phone calls whilst editing your spreadsheets.
There was a recent Reg article about sapphire production methods falling in cost (just as silicon wafers for semiconductors have done). Only today I saw some quartz watches for sale with sapphire crystals (the see through bit above the watch face) for £125, so much materials are no longer the preserve of higher-end man jewellery.
Check the LeapMotion Linux forums, Thad!
"Hey guys, I'm really sorry about . I've asked our guys to put our link back up [ to the beta Linux drivers] on the developer portal as soon as possible. It should include the latest software daemon package as well as a SDK. Unfortunately; there is no Airspace support for Linux at this time."
-DavidH Co-Founder & CTO
https://forums.leapmotion.com/showthread.php?2670-No-drivers
My old man's only reason for wanting a smartphone was for maps... now that Google, rather than improve the 'offline maps' feature it only introduced a few versions back, has decided to hide it instead (type in 'okay maps'... WTF?) a Nokia Windows Phone would have been a better choice for him than Android- especially since he spends time driving in Europe.
As it is, he's gone back to his old Nokia candybar- he never got on with 'swiping' to answer a phone call on his Android, or the relatively short battery life. I dare-say he would find any smartphone just as confusing and infuriating, though. Doesn't help that the fag-lighter is his Transit is buggered.
I used to know where I was with with Nokia phone names... 3xxx was lower end, students and the like, 6xxx was business, 8xxx were small and desirable, 9xxx were things like the Communicator with a qwerty keyboard.... but that was ten years ago, so I can't help you now! : D
