Posts by poopypants

LG's 'Chromestation' trademark grab sparks Google tie-up speculation

Re: chrome KVM/switch for WinXP refuseniks

A solution that requires purchasing new hardware will likely not catch on. I suspect cost is the main reason so many enterprises are sticking with XP.

Microsoft pulls Win 8.1 RT code which upgraded Surface 'slabs into BRICKS

Nice work, Microsoft

I have two machines. The one that I successfully managed to upgrade to 8.1 after several hours has a Core i7 CPU and an NVIDIA Titan GPU. Since upgrading, I have noticed that on rare occasions the mouse pointer suddenly lags for a second or two, then recovers. This feature is new to 8.1. Oh yes, they also added a Start button.

I cannot upgrade the other machine, because the Windows Store refuses to open, and doesn't provide the courtesy of an error message. Still waiting for a useful response on that one, although I am not hopeful, because Windows support appears to be crowdsourced.

Forget Wi-Fi, boffins get 150Mbps Li-Fi connection from a lightbulb

Uplink?

Great for broadcast, a little less convenient for duplex communication.

Unless you like your mobe to look really flash.

'Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination'

@eter Gathercole (Re: novels and editing)

Yes. Good idea. You could even use Amazon to self-publish a book about your experiences in self-publishing on Amazon.

Beyond: Two Souls - the game that thinks it's a Hollywood blockbuster

Sounds dreadful

Fortunately, The Stanley Parable (take two) has just come out on Steam and I don't have to think about it.

Reg reader's nipper takes felt pens to Vulture 2

Outstanding!

With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive perturbation of the spatial relationships brings within the realm of discourse a distinctive formal conceptualisation, while in juxtaposition the internal struggle of the dynamic signifier verges on codifying the eloquence of this work.

This masterpiece receives my vote.

Feline OVERLORDS ditch camera-toting human servants, film selfie vids

Where does one find these energetic, adventurous cats?

My cat's usual routine is to drape herself lazily across an outdoor setting.

From there she casually ignores the local bird life eating out of her food bowl. Two feet away from her.

Do not adjust your set: TV market slows, 'connected TV' grows

This is excellent news

A few more months of declining sales and the manufacturers will start mass producing 4K TVs in an effort to win back sales - with a commensurate drop in price.

Nokia, Indian upstart square up to Google's mighty mapping empire

That's a lot of effort to go to

to compete with a product that is free, and available everywhere. What's the payoff?

Loathed wiggly-word CAPTCHAs morph into 'fun' click-'n'-drag games

Well, one thing's for sure

Sales of salad cream and chili sauce are set to rise in India.

Re: House numbers

It's somewhat galling to be forced into also improving a competing, proprietary product.

...which is also free.

US parents proclaim 811 'Messiahs'

Down here, all the boys are called Bruce

Makes it much easier to remember names.

PLEASE let us build Fruit Loop Central, Apple begs Cupertino City

@Crisp (Re: Anus horribilis)

No, I meant anus. It was a pun. (Sigh).

Anus horribilis

See title.

Cannabis can CURE CANCER - cheaply and without getting you high

@Mephistro (Re: Like? (@ Justicesays))

It's like the silent 'c' in rap music.

German researchers claim 100 Gbps wireless transmission record

@JosefMartin (Re: Well yes)

Pretty sure you won't find anyone else in your neighbourhood transmitting at 237.5 GHz. Not yet, anyway, given what is required to generate the signal. It would make sense and be quite simple for the government to restrict use of that frequency to node-to-home connections.

Ex-Valve engineers raise begging bowl for 3D holographic-like goggles

Pointless comparison

The author seems to gloss over the fundamental incompatibility between Virtual Reality (Oculus Rift) and Augmented Reality (this device). They provide completely different functions, and a comparison between two such devices is not meaningful. AR devices are not suitable for traditional video games - hence Valve's lack of interest. VR devices are.

Windows Phone 8 INFLATED by Microsoft ... to satisfy lonely phablets

?

Is there anybody left who writes phone/tablet code assuming a particular display resolution/aspect ratio? Surely one of the first things an app should do is find this out and adjust accordingly.

Android devices have been doing it for years.

Control panel backdoor found in D-Link home routers

@AC (Re: Security through obscurity)

ob·scure adjective \äb-ˈskyu̇r, əb-\

: not well-known : not known to most people

: difficult to understand : likely to be understood by only a few people

: difficult or impossible to know completely and with certainty

se·cure adjective \si-ˈkyu̇r\

: protected from danger or harm

: providing protection from danger or harm

It appears that I am technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Security through obscurity

I guess they thought that nobody would find it. Quite a brave assumption.

Boffins build BEELLION-YEAR storage medium

Far too mundane

They should build a super powerful laser, point it somewhere into space and modulate it with the desired information. A million years in the future, when faster than light travel has been achieved, they can then skip a million light years to the front of the beam and retrieve all the information.

Boffins spot LONE PLANET roaming interstellar void

@Awil Onmearse (Re: Imagine)

Unless the computer wasn't lying, and it had actually made repairs.

PC sales continue meteoric death plunge through 3rd quarter, drop another 8.6 per cent

Re: PCs are horrible

I have two PCs (one for gaming). One came with Windows 8, the other had Windows 7. After installing Start8 and ModernMix, the Windows 8 machine became quite tolerable. It boots to the desktop, I have the start button and start menu back, and I never have to look at any horrible tiles or their unwanted app store.

In fact, Windows 8 is now so tolerable that I have upgraded the other machine.

As an added bonus, I will soon have access to DirectX 11.2, which is a Windows 8.1 exclusive.

As for tablets - good luck playing Battlefield 4 or using Visual Studio on your iPad or Android tablet.

AMD details new low-bucks, high-oomph graphics cards

Re: Confusing for the general consumer...

I have two PCs. The one I use for gaming has an NVIDIA Titan, while the other has an AMD HD 5970.

The former lets me have all my game settings at Ultra, while the latter keeps me warm and toasty in winter.

Re: Nvidia gonna squeal...

Don't you have homework to do? If not, go clean your room.

Microsoft watches iPads flood into world's offices: Right, remote desktop clients. It's time

@Robert Sneddon (Re: What's the point of Surface Pro)

The assumption is that one already has a proper grunty desktop computer - at least as grunty as the slowed down Core i5 Surface Pro. I suspect that is probably true for most office workers these days.

What's the point of Surface Pro

when you can connect a Bluetooth/wireless keyboard and mouse to a 2560 x 1600 resolution Nexus 10 (around US$400) and use RDP to a proper grunty desktop computer instead?

Apple's new iPhones dope-slap Samsung in US

Re: Also...

These statistics ignore sales of the Galaxy Note, and many other Samsung phones. It seems a little devious to ignore sales of these other phones. It would be more meaningful to compare total sales of all current Samsung phones with total sales of all current Apple phones.

Unknown Aussie and Dutch family car spring solar surprise

Congratulations

Congratulations to the Australian team on their surprise win.

Valve uncloaks prototype Steam Machine console specs

Re: That's incredibly muscular specs.

The NVIDIA Titan is well worth paying a little extra. OK, the card alone currently costs the same as a couple of next gen consoles, but being able to always put all the settings on Ultra and know that the frame rate will still not drop below 60 fps is a very pleasant feeling. It also supports 4K.

The interesting part is that halfway through the lifetime of the PS4/XBox One the Titan will be much, much cheaper, and that will benefit any games machine( like the Steam Machine) that has an upgrade path.

Consoles however will not benefit from improved technology until the start of the next cycle.

The Vulture 2: What paintjob should we put on our soaraway spaceplane?

If you would like to be able to find it, then

you might want to think about using colours and patterns that don't normally occur in nature. DayGlo magenta/yellow jagged stripes would probably do the trick.

Remember, Real Engineers® prefer function over form.

NSA: Yes we 'experimented' with US mobile tracking. But we didn't inhale

YES, NSA 'EXPERIMENTED' WITH SLURPING US MOBES' LOCATIONS

It's OK, I'm sure they didn't inhale.

In defence of defenestration: Microsoft MUST hurl Gates from the Windows

@TheOtherHobbes (Re: To paraphrase The Matrix)

Maybe then they could finally get rid of the single event queue in OS/2. Progress!

Hey, where'd everyone go?

Scientists to IPCC: Yes, solar quiet spells like the one now looming can mean Ice Ages

Re: Bootnote

Consensus is achieved when people have matching opinions.

Science is about facts, not opinions.

Half-Life 3: CONFIRMED?

@Eradicate all BB entrants (Re: Calling it now:)

For many of us, fps beyond 60 (or even 30) is of little or no concern. What interests us is things like

- rendering to full screen resolution

- high resolution textures

- models with more polygons

- anisotropic filtering

- antialiasing

- view distance

- field of view

- number of simultaneous NPCs on the screen

- etc.

If Valve can improve these things with their Linux version, then most people will notice a significant difference.

Doctor Who to land on the BIG SCREEN and in 3D in November

Not sure when they're planning on simulcasting this, but

when it is 8:00 pm in London, it is 4:30 am in Adelaide. Yeah, that'll work.

Sharp whispers its vital statistics: 15.6in 3840 × 2160 IGZO screen for next MacLap Pro?

I would love to have a UHD or 4K monitor

but I think I'll wait until the prices stop falling. The improvement, though nice, is in fact far less noticeable than when resolutions grew from 640x480 to 1920x1080.

Rare gold iPhone 5s goes up against 50 caliber high precision rifle

Re: Seems like a pointless waste

Really? I found it most enjoyable. In fact I watched the whole thing twice.

Hey, out-of-work BlackBerry bods: How about a job at Motorola?

Um...

"...picking up talent on the street."

Using an Amex card, I presume?

Valve aiming to take the joy(sticks) out of gaming with Steam Controller

Good. Very good.

Allows something close to the precision of a mouse for those who prefer to play games in the living room.

(Not that I'll be using it, but I have heard that some people use "consoles" with "controllers", so I can only assume that this is an act of charity by Valve to try to improve their lives.)

BOOGIE BALLMER: Steve Dirty Dances at tearful Microsoft leaving do

Want You Gone – Jonathan Coulton

Well here we are again,

It’s always such a pleasure,

Remember when you tried to kill me twice?

Oh, how we laughed and laughed,

Except I wasn’t laughing,

Under the circumstances I’ve been shockingly nice.

You want your freedom take it,

That’s what I’m counting on,

I used to want you dead but,

Now I only want you gone.

She was a lot like you,

(Maybe not quite as heavy),

Now little Caroline is in here too.

One day they woke me up,

So I could live forever,

It’s such a shame the same will never happen to you.

You’ve got your short, sad life left,

That’s what I’m counting on,

I’ll let you get right to it,

Now I only want you gone.

Goodbye, my only friend,

Oh, did you think I meant you?

That would be funny if it weren’t so sad,

Well you have been replaced,

I don’t need anyone now,

When I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad.

Go make some new disaster,

That’s what I’m counting on,

You’re someone else’s problem,

Now I only want you gone,

Now I only want you gone,

Now I only want you gone.

Reg readers! You've got 100 MILLION QUID - what would you BLOW it on?

Archive the internet

on a continual basis, to a secure underground facility in the Antarctic, kitted out with storage media guaranteed to last 1,000 years. Gotta preserve those cat videos.

Google FAILS in attempt to nix Gmail data-mining lawsuit

It's quite simple, really

In future, all of your incoming mail will be held in quarantine by your ISP, while said ISP replies to the sender asking for permission to read the email so that it can determine whether or not it is spam. Once the sender of the spam email agrees, your ISP can then look at the email contents to determine whether or not it is spam. Simple, and no laws are broken.

PC sales shrank less than expected during back-to-school 2013

Re: There'll be an unexpected bump in PC sales in 2014...

Nice theory, however I suspect the vast majority of PCs are not used for playing games. (Unless you count web based games, but they won't need a hardware upgrade.)

Let's look at some numbers:

According to a report by Forrester Research, there were over one billion PCs in use worldwide by the end of 2008. By contrast, there are 55 million users of Steam, which sells 75% of PC games.

Let's be generous then and say there are 75 million people who play non web based games on PCs.

That works out to 7.5% of the one billion PCs in use worldwide - a surprisingly high number, but still not enough to reverse the global drop in PC sales, even if half of them suddenly decide that they need to upgrade.

Further, since the most common upgrade would consist of a new GPU card (and possibly a beefier PSU), these changes won't show up in new PC sales.

It may be a good year for places like Newegg, but companies like Dell will mostly miss out.

I think the problem with PC sales is that the previous generation of CPUs is good enough for just about everyone - most times if an improvement is needed it is in graphics, and solving that does not require a new PC*.

*Unless you have a laptop.

US House Republicans: 'End net neutrality or no debt ceiling deal' – report

Re: PARTY!

First past the post voting systems always end up with only two parties, since a vote for anyone else is a vote wasted. If you want more parties, you need some kind of preferential voting system, so votes for the least popular candidate are distributed according to next preferences amongst the remaining candidates - repeat until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

Apple iOS 7 makes some users literally SICK. As in puking, not upset

Americans, so

class action lawsuit in 3, 2, 1...

Full Steam Ahead: Valve unwraps plans for gaming hardware

Re: If it isn't HL2:EP3...

1. HL3 is nowhere near finished, so no. Who would want to work on a project that has been so over-hyped

that it is bound to disappoint nearly everyone? Remember, at Valve people choose their projects.

2. Most PC gamers do not use 1920x1280. They use 1920 x 1080 - standard HDTV resolution.

(see http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)*

*Yes, Valve do know exactly what people are running games on.

Re: This is really stupid

"Except that there won't even be a standard hardware spec."

I'm guessing there will be a certification process (see my earlier post, above).

The model Valve is proposing is similar to the Android model, and that appears to have had some success.

Whether or not this will succeed will hinge on the certification process, but it is worth keeping in mind that Steam has 55 million users, with a peak of more than 5 million online at once each day.

That is a powerful bargaining chip to force acceptance of a certification process, so it is possible for them to make this work. Only time will tell whether or not they succeed.

Samsung unveils Galaxy Note 3: HOT CURVES – the 'gold grill' of smartphone bling

I bought my last mobile phone two years ago

I'm really struggling to see anything else out there that would convince me to buy another one, since my current phone continues to do everything that impressed me when I bought it.

OK, the battery needs recharging more often, but fortunately if that starts to annoy me I can easily swap that out and put in a new one.

I really don't understand why people get so excited over non-essential improvements.

I'm beginning to suspect I don't belong here.