Posts by WildW

Found yet another plastic nostalgia knock-off under the tree? You, sir, need an emulator

Re: And Dizzy.

I have played Lemmings in the two player mode precisely three times in my life. On each occasion the person I played against vowed never to play it with me again.

Google wants to track your phone and credit card through meatspace

Stores? I remember those.

Who buys things in shops any more? Internet shopping has killed the traditional shopping experience - anything worth having has had to come mail-order for years.

Cortana Android beta goes public

I tried Cortana on Windows 10 and all it ever did was search on Bing for the thing I said.

Hola HoloLens: Reg man gets face time with Microsoft's holographic headset

Cortana

So it won't be long until I can have Cortana in the room with me looking just like in Halo. I think I'm going to like Windows 10.

Google's first stab at control-free ROBOT car rolls off the line

But does it have Robert Picardo's voice?

While I don't imagine it will take you someplace other than where you wanted to go, I can imagine the occasional detour down the street coming soon to every town where Google bought all those billboards.

Auntie hires API firm to manage new online BBC Store

Timeshift Engaged

It is still legal to record live television broadcasts, like we used to in the VHS days, isn't it? I'm not sure why we'd want to pay for it all a second time.

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

DAB in a mobile doesn't make too much sense, especially given the old standard and the patchy coverage. Mobiles have everything in them to receive internet radio stations in whatever flavour of codec you like. If you're going to make a nice API for digital radio, make it for internet radio streams that already exist.

It ought to be far easier to come up with a deal on extra download allowance for internet radio with the mobile networks than to convince the phone manufacturers to put DAB hardware in.

Microsoft on the Threshold of a new name for Windows next week

I'm going to predict it will be called only "Windows" and you'll be paying an annual subscription for a continuously updated OS for the rest of your days.

How the FLAC do I tell MP3s from lossless audio?

Self inflicted

My father was a hifi junkie. . . read all the magazines, saved up and upgraded his components over the years, and made the rest of the family help him do blind hardware comparisons. The result was that he had highly trained ears and could really tell the difference between these things. But I do wonder if all he really achieved was making himself more fussy.

I think for him the best possible sound experience would have been some mythical perfect set of stereo equipment that would reproduce every last nuance as if the whole band we right there in front of him. I tend to think that a good rock song can always be enhanced by the roar of a V8 and the smile of the girl sitting next to me (at least this is how I imagine it working.)

I suspect I probably love music as much as he did, but I can enjoy it through relatively cheap headphones and whatever my current phone is. I think he was so in love with the idea of reproducing it with maximum fidelity, of hearing every last instrument and sound, that maybe it became more of a technical exercise than anything else. I try to make sure than I don't get too interested in perfect sound reproduction, as I worry it will only hamper my enjoyment in the long run.

And in any case, he left me his stack of Cyrus kit and PMC speakers, I'm good.

NASA on Curiosity bot: Mission accomplished (for now at least)

I understand now

NASA have confirmed that Mars once had water oceans and had the right conditions to support microbial life. I see their next lander, InSight, will land on Mars and drill deeper into the surface. I'm now convinced that the Americans are looking for oil on Mars.

El Reg Contraption Confessional No.1: The Dragon 32 micro

RF

The RGB monitor output on the back of the Dragon is good enough to drive a SCART (though we likely won't have those on our tellys much longer either) with a properly hacked together cable.

NASA serves up Curiosity's billion-pixel panorama

I love these pictures from the surface of another world, but after seeing a few of these Mars panoramas they tend to leave me with the impression that Mars is such a sad, dull place. Just this desert of red sand and rock across the whole planet. I don't think I want to go there any more.