Posts by werdsmith 7139 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011
IDIOTS when it comes to GUI. Though mystifyingly Ubuntu has same disease and Apple Mac nows seems to be going backwards, though I never have liked their search tool and stupid big Dock/launcher at the bottom of screen. One that pops out from the side makes far more sense on Widescreen Landscape, only top/bottom on Portrait screens. Why do almost no screens (and none on laptop) support portrait, though many graphics drivers do? I only use TV to watch video.
Or maybe it's you.
Because sometimes we have to accept that our own personal subjective preferences don't necessarily represent those of the rest of the universe.
If you rotate the entire ship - now you cant service anything from the outside without first stopping the rotation (need a lot of fuel). You can't go outside except at the axis of rotation or you get thrown away from the ship...
If you ignore the life support suit that the spacewalkers wear, this is the same as working on high bridges/buildings etc, like a Steeplejack. The SteepleJack can climb on the outside of a high building with the right equipment, just as I can walk across the Millau viaduct without plummeting to earth.
Oh FFS. Nobody is going to have their privacy violated by a drone that makes a noise like a hundred thousand angry wasps. They are not exactly surreptitious. It's not going to catch you in the act, when you hear the drone in the distance you can put your cock away before it even gets over your fence.
So some guy wants to wear a big watch. Shrug. Others wear ear-rings, gold chains, rings and have tattoos. That's the way things are. I personally, wouldn't want to wear a big watch but I'm not the centre of the universe so what I want doesn't matter squat. <br/>
Hey but maybe deriding somebody else's choices makes people feel better about themselves, for some reason of inadequacy. If that's the case then fill yer boots.
Someone always pulls the "I've got a watch that actually tells the time" thing on every one of these discussions. It's not unlike the "I've got a phone that I use to actually make phone calls" things.
I don't really need a watch (or a phone) to tell the time, the time is everywhere I need it.
I do like the no ring tone silence, and the quick look to see if a notification is worth acting on or can be ignored.
Really there are a billion things in this world that I don't find useful but others do. I'm not really all that inclined to try and deride people that do find them useful though. That would make me look far more like a tosser than having a smartwatch would.
I use a first gen pebble time too. Very useful to me. Their new Time 2 or whatever just didn't do much extra that was useful for me to upgrade. Plus they seem to have gone down the already saturated fitness route with their Health thing.
The other problem for Pebble is that they just don't have the mass to be able to afford the marketing required to really shift numbers. They depend on social media and word of mouth, so even though they are probably the most sorted smartwatch and one of the cheapest, nobody knows it.
"It has also become evident that at present smartwatches are not for everyone," said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers.
Well I can see why Jitesh is a senior research analyst, with such incredible insight. None of us ordinary folk could have worked that out on our own.
Latest reports say that the parachutes jettisoned too early and the rockets fired for 4 seconds instead of 30. So at least it won't need to use its drill to get under the Martian surface.
Hopefully Matt Damon's potato crop is not damaged.
The shoestring Beagle actually did a better job of landing, just the B&Q butt hinges on the panels were too stiff so they failed to open.
Although I should add that with a heli, the ability to fly a controlled approach and landing without power does depend on the alert pilot recognising and correctly responding to the engine failure in good time, particularly in lighter helicopters with low rotor inertia. Failure to respond may result in rotor RPM decaying to an unrecoverable speed, and the time available on a light helicopter if the disk is under a high load at the time of engine failure (fairly likely) may only be a couple of seconds.
In the same circumstances in a fixed wing, there will always be lift available by pitching down to gain airspeed, as log as there is altitude to do so.
You can use a search engine to look up the airprox reports - reference numbers 2016114, 2016119, 2016123, 2016128.
The report that was filed of a drone hitting an airliner was investigated and decided it was probably a plastic bag. It was reported right here on The Register. It is OK and healthy for people to be skeptical about what we are told, and very unhealthy to accept everything that has an official stamp on it as 100% correct.
Yes, height and airspeed can be converted into lift, just as it can with a fixed wing plane.
People intuitively believe a helicopter will fall out of the sky without power, but if that were the case then there would be none certified to fly, no helicopters.
A student pilot has to learn to fly a power off approach before they are allowed solo.
Definitely not, please; too easily converted into Assist - o - Pilot, which I suspect would be popular in the US.
In the 1950s Cessna aircraft marketed their spring steel undercarriage with a nosewheel instead of tailwheel arrangement as "land-o-matic". Interestingly, people did not expect the aircraft to land without any pilot control inputs.
This is an example of having to legislate for the lowest common denominator.
Tesla warn people at every opportunity that they need to stay in control of their car, maintain full attention to the road and hold the steering wheel. When they buy the car, when they start the car, when they switch on the assist, when they engage it. And if they still don't pay enough attention it reminds them again.
If, after all that, the driver still thinks they can watch a DVD then changing a couple of works really is not going to make any difference.
What is really needed is a hard reset of the way any government or opposition communicates its activities to the electorate. What we need is actual truth, but what we get from the variously polarised media outlets is shit-stirring. Consequently we have a broken democracy, millions of hysterical gullible twats crying and wetting their pants, hopeless people in government and even more hopeless people being offered for opposition.
Get some Vegemite up ya.
I presume it's available there?
Yeah, Vegemite which like Marmite for kids.
We can get it if we look hard enough (is it supposed to be a Kraft product?)
http://www.waitrose.com/shop/ProductView-10317-10001-3721-Kraft+vegemite
Thought it was Aussie, not American corporate.
Anyway, prefer my salt-bomb home grown.
The Pi's origins are hobbling it a bit, its chip is actually a GPU that has an ARM processor tagged on as an auxiliary support device, it actually depends on the GPU to boot. That was what was available to the founders without developing something new, and they presumably didn't foresee their current situation (and even if they did they were working on a shoestring). If they were to depart from the mostly compatible Pi format and produce something with dedicated NIC, SATA and RAM > 1GB and they used the existing PI popularity to make that into something of a standard then you have a step toward ARM/Linux desktop.
But I think that would require an external backer, like Broadcom maybe, to take a risk on it.
As someone that has purchased and used several Android phones over the years, each time hoping they have fixed the UI that I can't stand, this article gave me hope that there actually is a decent Android phone out there for me. One that I could get along with.
Guess it's just the same old same old mess then.
As was the reaction of people she said good morning to, as she got onto the carriage. And her reaction at being grumpily ignored.
There's something not quite ringing true about this Register article, I mean if you get on a tube to move around central London in the daytime, chances are that the majority of folk riding will not be Londoners, but will be tourists or new residents from around the world. Often in groups and they do talking in their little groups whilst moving around and bumping everyone with their enormous backpacks.
How do they catch on the the tube etiquette of pretending nobody else exists so quickly? Do they take lessons?
The lady saying good morning has a strong chance of addressing an affable Kiwi or a friendly Swede and should get a response.
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