Posts by Dave 126

Google's self-driving car snags first-ever license in Nevada

Computer driver, human navigator...

I once asked Google Maps to plot a route from Birmingham to Truro... which it did fine, except for including a return trip to Merthyr Tydfil before finding its way back to the M5. 'Never ascribe to malice what could be attributed to incompetence', so I won't suggest that the operators of the Severn Bridge and the Welsh Development Agency hold advertising accounts with the Chocolate Factory.

(Sorry to any readers unfamiliar with the South West of the UK mainland... it's the equivalent of Q>T>B>T>P when you wanted Q>P on your keyboard)

Re: On the one hand...but on the other...

Would you be happy with it if were shown, after umpteen thousand hours of testing, to be safer than a human driver?

A human driver might suddenly fall ill, be distracted by their domestic issues, be drunk, be an asshole, not be very good at driving in the first place, drives a grey car in fog and doesn't turn their lights on, falls asleep, is trying to impress his mates, sees an attractive shop window, sees an attractive member of the opposite sex, is wearing high heels, be texting their mates, be listening to a Hendrix guitar solo, gets a fly in their eye, sneezes, drives in the middle of the motorway while not actively overtaking somebody, drops a fag on their lap...

MP blasts 'ineffective' games regulation

Not if your arsenal is only comprised of Custard Pies, Condoms filled with Flour, Rotten Fruit and Eggs. Anti-materiel weaponry includes Muck Spreaders and Badly Parked Tractors.

Re: More Censorship from MPs.

I don't think it was the mechanics of operating the rifle that the video game helped Breivik with, but rather situational awareness. I don't know why Keith Vaz has to cite that Norwegian twat when he could have pointed at the US Department of Defence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army

[A FPS based on Unreal, developed and distributed by the US DOD. Whilst originally a PR exercise, it has been extended to military training applications]

Cheap MacBook Airs for all!

Re: Best job in the world

I disable AdBlock on The Reg, because it was the Reg that told be about it. And they asked me nicely not to use it. It's no hardship on me, because El Reg's ads tend to stay on the right, and don't pop up all over the place like some sites do.

They asked nicely, and I feel I want to encourage that kind of courtesy.

Re: Thunderport

It is technically feasible, because ThunderBolt (LightPeak) is an extension to the PCIe bus, and can do anything an internal PCIe card can (hence the Vaio Z laptop with an external GPU). There is a convoluted and expensive way to do what you want:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html

Thunderbolt > ExpressCard 34 adaptor > Expresscard 34 Compact Flash Reader

Dolphins copied sharks

Sharks have been around for longer, so it is obvious that dolphins copied sharks. And the Thylacine clearly copied wolves and hyenas, but their industrial espionage failed them on the placenta blueprints. The sharks considered suing, but they know dolphins are more intelligent and can put on a better presentation in a court of law.

Anyone here is welcome to get their crayons out and show us how to make a thin light laptop that doesn't look like a thin light laptop.

Apple 'iTV' looks like Cinema Display, says Throat

to JDX

Errrr..... Much like the box for a Macbook or Cinema Display? ie, plan and elevation views on a white background, large text in grey, small text in black. Made of glossy cardboard. Ummm... Have I missed your point?

Phillips

Phillips? Or B&O?

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/beovision10#/BeoVision%2010_40/360_40

Note the picture at the bottom of the page... a photo of a BeoVision TV displaying an Apple TV interface.

(Dunno if Phillips still make the panels for B&O)

Megan Fox fingers fondleslab in sexy store promo

Re: Ah, I was wondering what had happened to La Fox

So you hadn't seen the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen's 'The Dictator'?

"Ahh Megan, you were worth every penny!"

Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S III

Re: Size isn't everything

> Well buy a smaller phone from a different manufacturer.

A good sentiment, but the choice of small phones (from any manufacturer) is very limited these days. I know, I've been looking for one.

I hear you on the big fingers issue, though. Maybe Nokia should re-release the 6210i.

Oh, whilst we're old-school minded: What happened to those jobs which banned cameras? (Some legal trades, some nuclear power stations used to have a no-camera rule, but didn't bother enforcing it after camera phones became ubiquitous)

Here's to choice.

Re: but what's next ?

Yeah, there isn't much choice in the Small Phone segment any more. The budget phones are bulky, and the the premium phones have over-size screens. Somewhere, I have a Trace SGH-T519 (I can't remember what it was called in the UK- it was the one which was subject to fake viral videos of it snapping in half) kicking around. It's tiny, but usable even for those with sausage fingers. Sadly, it doesn't work in Europe.

Perhaps wider adoption of 7" tablets ( that live on your car dashboard and do double duty as sat-navs, or your jacket pocket as PMPs) will cause people to ditch the 3.5"+ phones in favour of smaller models again- like the classics from Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. Phone does the all the fancy radio stuff, other gadgets do the screen and HID as and when required.

I can't be the only one who is wary of going out for a few jars with half a grand of gadget in my pocket.

WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo

Re: No Ethernet or USB 3 ???

You have a new Mac with Thunderbolt. You drop it on the floor / it fails. 'No problem', you think, 'I'll dust off my older Mac and continue working on my project'.

'Oh, bugger!'

Nokia's 41Mp cameraphone shoots towards retail

'To me this is just abit of a stunt'

Really? It seems more a cunning way of sidestepping the problems in making bringing certain abilities to a camera in a very thin form factor. The small size doesn't allow for an optical mechanical zoom, and even if it did, it would soon break because phones see more use and abuse than normal cameras.

Consider this: most zoom shots are outside and in daylight: Lots of light, so we'll just crop an image from the middle of this 41Mp sensor.

By contrast, most low light shots are indoors, of social gatherings. No need to zoom, so lets interpolate and reduce noise.

Seems a crafty trade-off to me!

Sony outs its first Ultrabook

Re: Sorry Sony. This is not good enough

Yep, if anyone was going to distinguish themselves by making a song and dance about their display, you'd expect it to be Sony. Oh, wait:

Vaio Z Ultrabook. 13". 1920x1080 screen. Comes with a LightPeak dock that houses a Radeon 6630m and a BluRay drive. £2250. Eek. And the 15" version has a 1080 IPS screen.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/ultraportables/2011/07/14/sony-vaio-z-40093414/

But sorry, Michael H.F. Wilkinson, still no CUDA.

Intel bakes palm-sized Core i5 NUC to rival Raspberry Pi

-'tbf kiosks do need to be fairly snappy in use'

Yep, my only recent experience is using a Kodak photo-printing Kiosk... was a bit slow, wasn't sure if it had registered a finger press etc The less irritating the kiosk, the more I would be inclined to browse my SD card and spend more money on prints. Maybe a case for Intel.

-'Ergo if the fan doesn't work, your whole system's down.'

Not quite. More recent Intel chips will throttle themselves first, then resume normal service. (Prove this to yourself with a Core2 laptop, some duck tape and a recent game demo : D). In a Kiosk there should be plenty of room for a nice big passive cooling system.

But yeah, an ARM solution would appear to be the better option in many cases. It seems Android on ARM is capable of everything that would asked of most kiosks.

Re: different beasts

Awesome! Thank you admiraljkb for bringing your hobby to our attention : D

I now know what inspired the model battle ships in Iain M Bank's 'Surface Detail': Much like your sport, but with expendable human servants instead of RC gear.

Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook

Re: nutty price

"you really need to go to a store and pick one up for just a few seconds"

Agreed. It surprised me when I picked up some untrathin Tosh in a shop the other day. Looking at the numbers alone don't make you appreciate the weight.

Re: Is it just me

There are only so many ways to make a very thin laptop. The use of a light, stiff material, a smaller battery and an SSD are hard to avoid.

Dolphins look like sharks because they are both responding to the same constraints, not because they are copying each other.

But yeah, on your point about the screen, I agree completely. Here at least is room for manufacturers to distinguish themselves...

Re: Meh!

If I failed to beat off the junky with my 17" refurbished Dell and got stabbed, it'l do good duty as my gravestone -it's the the right size, shape and weight!

Re: No SD!

"My camera uses CF cards, So what use is a SD Card Reader for me?"

Search google for 'SD to CF adaptor'. They can be had for around a fiver, and you'll save loads on the price difference between SD and Compact Flash, not to mention the convenience of SD.

No SD!

For crying out loud! Users will have to keep a tiny microSD>USB gubbin on their keyring. Or use their phone as a Mass Storage microUSB reader. That's it, my cheapo phone can do things this won't : D

Light laptop > easy travel > travel > camera > SD card

MicroSD cards are alright, but they really need to made in a garish day-glo coloured plastic, to make them easier to spot when fumbled onto the ground.

"Apple must have done some mega deal on buying components."

They do. It costs them less to buy the parts for an iPad than it does their competitors the parts for a rival machine. For some components, they buy a significant fraction of the world's output. Tim Cook knew his previous job very, very well.

Mystery as Google offloads SketchUp 3D drawing tool

sketchup and 3d printing?

Sketchup seems better geared to the sort of model that you would print onto cardboard (2d), then cut and fold into the desired shape- like the buildings that were available for model railways. The advantages are lower cost, photographic surface appearance, and a bigger maximum size; the trade-off is the loss of fine 3D detail (that sketchup isn't really geared for).

There is still the open-source Blender suite for 3D fun- I can't comment on how easy it is to use, but it would appear to be customisable to suit the user.

Meanwhile, in the entry-level professional space... Rhino seems well geared towards home users (I could see a 'Rhino LE' being bundled with 3d printers) with lots of useful tools and wide import/export format support.

Some of the higher-end traditionally parametric packages ( for mechanical engineering, rather than designing aliens or orcs) are beginning to incorporate 'direct editing' functionality. This is because shuttling models back and forth between, say, Rhino and Solidworks is already an established workflow in some sectors (where you want a free-form sculpted surface on top of a rigorously engineered chassis, for example) .

Nympho hauled to loon-cooler after serial bonkathon brutality

Already is, according to the videos (search for 'Trojan Olympics', NSFW)

Male victim: Can't you put at least one officer on this?

Police Sergeant: 'Fraid not, sir.

Male victim: Where are they?!

Police Sergeant: They're all hanging around outside the tube station with their ties loosened and their top shirt button undone.

(Apologies to Smith and Jones)

Moore's Law has ten years to run, predicts physicist

"It does seem a bit of an affliction for scientists once they reach a certain age or level of influence to start making "that's it, we've done it all, it's all down here from now on" type pronouncements"

-gronkle

Or, put another way:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

-Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke's first law

Blighty's IP framework one of world's worst for consumers

"extension of the term of protection of the rights of performers and record producers from 50 to 70 years"

It was extended in part because Cliff Richard was complaining that someone might soon use his earlier records in p0rn movies.... seriously.

Most of my favourite rock n rollers are, alas, long dead.

Lenovo U300s Ultrabook

Re: Not fan of Apple

"They all have enough money to design unique stuff."

There is only so much you can do to a laptop if you want it to be as thin as possible, yet still have the screen and keyboard in their correct places! Adding, say, fins like a 1950s Cadillac is not 'design', it is decoration. For the same reasons, most modern small cars look much the same.

Lenevo have made efforts here- the front and sides are recessed with respect to the lid and base: it does look a little like a book.

Re: Enough !!!

1. 16:10 screen

2. Menus in MS office.

3. A nice power-adaptor connector

4. A charging system that won't destroy the battery if the machine is left plugged in for days on end.

5. A choice to run any of the OSs that are best supported by software developers.

6 A Caps-lock indicator light (seriously, Samsung are neglecting them)

7 That big touch pad is apparently alright once you get the hang of it

Are some good reasons to buy a Mac. Personally, I use a PC. I think you'll find that most free-thinking Reg readers are capable of weighing the pros and cons, and so choose the best horse for their course. Except you, it seems.

Re: Massive markup

"The only reason to manufacturer a laptop in aluminium is so the price can be jacked up"

What, like a Coke can, or take-away container? Apple do choose a very time-consuming method of processing Aluminium (CNC machining) but there are other methods. Aluminium is fairly light, cheap, corrosion resistant, heat conducting, easily anodised in a spectrum of colours, fairly easy to work and also stiff in section (because, compared to steel, you would use a larger volume, at the same weight).

Magnesium alloys -or magnesium aluminium alloys - have been also been used, decades ago, for computer cases because it can be easily cast into shapes such as heat-sink fins. Frog Design (designed an early Mac) did this for IBM (IIRC, maybe just being black it just looked like an IBM - all other desktops were beige at the time).

I take it that your Dr is not in material science?

Re: Ultrabooks

Re 1) Ah yeah, but then you deplete your battery too quickly.

Anyway, I understand it, these newer Intel graphics are on a par with a Geforce 540m - i.e far better than than my laptop's 9600m that runs Batman Arkham Asylum perfectly smoothly, and certainly has enough poke for running CAD applications. Not everyone needs to run Crysis. There are plenty of tasks that can push the CPU besides gaming.

2) I agree completely.

Re: But the screen

Quite- even if you are using 4:3 or 16:10 for watching for video, those extra pixels are idea for the controls. Video editing- even more so.

Boy wrecks £22k worth of MacBooks by weeing on them

Re: liquids - the one big Mac killer

My Dell has what look like water run-offs at the bottom of the keyboard - but I don't know where they drain to! It was advertised as being spill proof, but I haven't tested it yet!

Re: Piss? Sounds like a load of shit!

The first thing to do, after a spill, is to whip the battery out, pronto. Oh, wait...

This lad should be made to wee on some kit with capacitors in... educational, like.

Descriptive Camera develops text instead of images

The printed text doesn't look too easy to read...

perhaps this would be better implemented in a smartphone with text-to-speech?

(I am aware that there are degrees and variety of what we consider 'blind'... some people have vision that appears 'fractured', with some small areas perfectly visible... ie some registered blind people could read this camera's print-out. )

Arcam rPac

Re: It's a USB powered DAC implemented with asynchronous transfer protocol...

I did spot that typo, and it almost made some kind of sense - one would test hi-fi with an ear (mono, obviously!)

Only advice I can give is...

... be careful of Firewire-connected sound cards on PCs- some soundcards will only work if your FireWire chip is made by TI. [Standards! : D]

But I'll imagine you probably go for USB.

(I still can't work out what Win7 is doing to my audio out, and which mixer takes precedence over another. It seems that none of the volume controls in individual programs covers the whole range... confusing)

Re: The difference is clear?

I've had some some PCs with appalling sound output (I could hear the mouse cursor moving!) so a blind test wouldn't help us readers much unless we had the same computer as the reviewer. YMMV etc

How does it compare to similarly priced - and far more versatile - external sound cards?

Seems you might be better off with a second-hand iRiver H120 with Rockbox if music is your thing.

MIT boffins play BUILDING-SIZED Tetris

Nintendo theme...

okay, not quite the same, but here is a Nintendo-inspired effort that obviously took some time and effort:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7RR5V0rmN4o#!

(the most realistic Goldeneye 'mod' - Ever!)

Enjoy!

Netgear scores 802.11ac basestation first

Re: Good on them

Indeed, like the old jokes about fax machines!

Re: Why

At least it isn't like the Virgin modem that flashes blue when shunting data... I don't find flashing blue lights at all relaxing, no idea why 'designers' are so smitten by them. TV makers know this, and go with red LEDs, Apple have a civilised very small white light... but blue?

Ten... eight-bit classic games

Re: jumpers for goalposts

@ Halliwell, Hill, Wize

Thank you!

New satellite will blow your socks off - and spot them from spaaaace

me corrected!

After looking at the linked gallery, I thought "I've seen higher res images in Google Earth!" ( I've seen vehicles in Google's parking lot and could see if one had a newspaper left on the dashboard).

But a quick search tells me that Google Earth uses aerial photography in places.

'Apple will coast, and then decelerate' says Forrester CEO

Re: Not just hipsters...

Hi Tom 79,

Sorry for my generalisations, I should have qualified those statements! I do indeed know 'Gen Xers' (a term maybe less common this side of the pond) who have worked with computers since the early seventies, and gen-xers who have in 5 years gone from PC illiterate to coding e-commerce sites.

By the way, regarding: "(re)install Windows x every few months to make sure it was perfectly clean. " Have you considered making an image of your fresh system, and of fresh system + favourite apps and settings? Or should I take your comment to mean you are already using Time Machine?

regards

Not just hipsters...

But baby-boomers too. They have money. There are lots of them. They have less patience for things that don't work, and no inclination to roll up their sleeves and learn about what is under the bonnet.

It ain't hard to look at the demographics. We would all do well to do the same.

As Spike Milligan said to a station port on seeing a sign 'The 12.36 to Paddington has been cancelled due to unprecedented demand':

"The population has been getting bigger since 1846, what the fuck is unprecedented about it?"

Re: Fashionable

Fashion. Oh, so that's why Jony Ive's output resembles that of Dieter Rams work for Braun from the 1950s? They look like they do because of a deliberate lack of arbitrary features that is the basis for

fashion. Jony Ive's stuff is fashionless, not (un)fashionable. Like a Technics 1210, A Maglite, or a well made pair of boots.

Re: Apple's Success

Exactly. There are a fair few people who aren't short of a bob or two, and will happily pay a premium to do away with all the rough edges, half-arsed feature implementations and confusing inconsistent interfaces. Some people want a complicated SLR with lots of manual control, many others just want a camera that takes good pictures and you don't have to fumble with a lens cap.

What do rough edges do to the user? Well, we've all seen that video of a man smashing his PC in a cubicle out of sheer frustration!

Baby-boomers form a large part of this market, and they aren't all skint.

Re: I'll miss it

"DRM is stupid because it pisses off your customers"

I miss that kind of statement. The sort of statement that is obviously true, but can be too easily lost between the gaps of analysis reports and user-group research.

Other Jobs ideas along the same lines

"16:9 is stupid"

"Not having menus in your Office suite is stupid"

"Flash (on a mobile device) is stupid"

I agree with these statements. I don't have an iDevice -or DevicePro- because I like my USB gadgets to be Mass Storage and cheap, and the software I use is Win only.