Posts by onefang 1954 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2017
"They wouldn't let you buy a meal at a restaurant with it, because the meal - which you've just eaten - is already valueless when you pay for it."
Depends on how much fertilizer sells for in your neck of the woods. Though yeah, you do have to wait a while for that value to come out, so just call it an investment for the future.
"Contrary to some press reports, Hughes was not trying with this particular flight to prove the Earth isn't a sphere. He is a believer in the Flat Earth theory, and is mostly funded by Flat Earthers. His goal is to get into space – or at least above the 62-mile mark that officially marks the Kármán Line where the atmosphere ends and space begins – and prove whether or not our planet is a ball or a disc."
Er, so he's not trying to prove the Earth isn't a sphere, by trying to prove the Earth isn't a ball? If basic geometry is beyond him, no wonder his rocket didn't work.
"Lawyers also looked at the possibility of people being charged under statutory rape laws if they activated devices without the users consent, which basically it would be."
Only if the device is being worn at the time. I don't think you can rape a cardboard box stored under a bed. And if the device is being worn, I suspect the wearer wants it to be activated. Though it is true they are likely to be choosy about who activates it.
"Anyway, this was round 2008 when the credit crunch happened and the VAT rates dropped to 15% from 17.5% - Our companies main role was knocking out eCommerce sites for our clients... You can see whats coming Im sure. HARD CODED VAT RATES, every single client site needed to be changed, it was a trivial change, but it was going to be time consuming."
I remember in the early '80s, coding some rate in payroll software as a configurable option. Many decades later and the government still hasn't changed that rate.
"Make your own. It's not rocket science.
"Couple pointers: Ignore the herbage suggestion. Bung all the batter ingredients into a blender and spin until smooth. Use a 10" to 12" cast iron skillet instead of the recommended pan. Thinner batter is better, closer to crepe than pancake. An extra egg and less milk will provide more lift. Adjust salt levels according to dripping seasoning. If you have no dripping, any high smoke-point oil will work (duck fat makes a spectacular variation ... canola or peanut oil, not so much). If it fails, feed the result to the dog and try again (trial and error is inexpensive!)."
And then you make it sound like rocket science.
Being an Aussie that has been no where near a Yorkshire pudding, I had to look it up. Seems to basically be a batter made with eggs. Since I'm highly allergic to eggs, I'd have to make this sort of pizza thingy without eggs. So it just becomes a very very very deep dish pizza. I could eat that, just keep me away from the eggs.
Any horrified Yorkshire pudding eaters should enlighten me about what a pudding really is, if Wikipedia lied to me.
my-gov is so good that Centrelink preferred to use it, until they decided they prefer to not use it. It used to be that you could sign into my-gov, use single sign on to bring up Centrelink without signing in again, then leave Centrelink and go back to my-gov. Centrelink broke the exit path, now you sign out of Centrelink, but have no link to go back to my-gov, you have to manually go back there and sign out once more. It's like Hotel California.
"I'm forced to at least have footwear most shops and locations I have to go, and I MUST wear proper shoes at work."
Much less of that sort of nonsense here, the number of shops I can't go into barefoot I can count on one hand. I remember one job interview where the CEO and the head programmer wore just socks, I felt over dressed. Got that job. B-)
"PS. I'd be scared of hyperactive immune systems as they're the most frequent source of allergies."
My doctor calls it a double edged sword. Yes I have allergies, but I know what my allergies are, and they are things that are easy to avoid most of the time. "I gotta avoid eggs" vs "I rarely catch diseases or get infections" means the bad edge of that sword is very dull, and the good edge is razor sharp. I can't have flu vaccines coz of the egg allergy, but I don't catch the flu anyway, so no biggie.
"I wonder if you'd change your tune if you were ever forced to walk on very rough, sharp, or uncertain ground. The feel of sharp stones (on a ground full of them so no way to step around them), broken debris, or deep mud start to make you wish for something to cover your feet. Oh, and the ever-present threat of tetanus, which can hit you from a cut from a hidden object.
"And this from another frequent barefooter. But this barefooter has encountered all of the aforesaid, including buried rusty nails that embedded in the soles of my shoes."
Been there, walked over it, got the t-shirt. On top of that I live in sub-tropical Australia, the ground tends to get very hot in summer. Though I do find sharp stones to be worse than broken glass. It annoys me that half the footpaths around here are pebbles embedded in concrete. My hyper active immune system tends to take care of things like tetanus. I've had a rusty nail all the way through a foot once, cleaning up misplaced bits of house after a cyclone.
You are all spending waaaay too much on footwear. I walk everywhere, sometimes long distances, sometimes carrying heavy loads, and the bare feet I use are still the same pair of bare feet I got for free over fifty years ago. Admittedly my parents gave them to me, but I don't think they paid for them either. Sure sometimes the outer leather breaks, but they tend to magically repair themselves soon enough. No need to replace shoe laces, and I've never had to spend money on boot polish.
"I can't write firmware code on a tablet."
I've done coding on a phone, several times. The only reason I can't write firmware on a tablet is coz I don't own a tablet, otherwise it should be entirely possible. For the most recent bit of firmware I have written (a USB keyboard, written in assembler, for a PIC chip), I used all the tools that I have had installed on my old smart phone. I haven't gotten around to installing them on my new phone yet.
"load 700Mb of libraries and require 16Gb of RAM plus multiple cores just to offer a welcome screen"
You have that around the wrong way, the welcome screens are to distract you from the lengthy amount of time taken to load the 700MB of libraries, initialise them, and otherwise fill that 16 GB of RAM with useless bloat.
For all those people saying that seeing an advert means they will deliberately not buy the advertised product, or not buy from the advertiser, or buy from their competitors, ... perhaps Google's analytics could recognise that behaviour in people, and sell targeted adverts for competitors products, to drive sales away from their competitors?
I'm in two minds about this, am I giving them ideas, or should I just grab the popcorn?
"Just because I've bought something doesn't mean I want to buy the same thing again straight away, hopefully not for a few years anyway."
Ah, but built in obsolescence is accelerating. Soon the thing you ordered will be broken by the time it gets delivered to you, so best to order a new one straight away.
"All hail the US! We'll invent whatever flickin' units we need, and screw the rest of you!"
FTFY
Where's the "this is what style of markup we use, and it's help document" when I need it? And while I'm at it, where's the icon selection thingy? Maybe I need to let a few more things through uMatrix?
'Video effects designers who work with C++ code have a new unit of time to work with called a "flick."
'Short for "frame-tick" if you're willing to overlook the absence of the letter "l" from either word, a flick lasts 1/705,600,000 of a second.'
So would those working in C use 1/705,600,000-1 of a second? Lua people would use 1+1/705,600,000, coz that's 1 based rather than 0 based like C and C++. Python people prefer significant white space, but I'm no Python person, so I have no idea where they would put that, 1 / 705 600 000 perhaps?
There are 97 other languages on my resume, but I can't be arsed to go through them right now.
"Also works for cutting the wife's toe nails which I doubt those scissors could manage."
I also use power tools to cut my toenails. Long story short, they where surgically mutilated long ago, now grow about a cm thick. On the plus side, only need to cut them once every few years.
Long time lurker, only recently started posting around the place, and now I get a chance at the traditional "here's a correction, but I wont send it via the corrections link, coz that didn't work for me and I can't be bothered dealing with it manually".
There's a dangling /li tag in the list in the article.
Now I need a "you're new here, aren't you?" and my initiation is complete.
"I really don't think that 90Hz is necessary, after using an Oculus Rift DK2 - with a 75Hz refresh rate - for extended periods. 75Hz is definitely good enough for me, but perhaps other people are more sensitive?"
I think it largely depends on how likely you are to get ill. For people like me, who has only ever thrown up three times in my entire life, VR isn't any problem. And indeed, developing on my DK2, even when the code was in an initial technicolour yawn inducing state that made the client feel ill quickly, never had a problem. Oculus I think set the bar at 90 Hz for being best for everyone, but I think they where covering their arses a bit.
VR porn works quite well actually, even with the low resolution, and even with most of them being just 180 degree movies, and only 3 DOF. The immersion you get is great, it's like really being there, so intimate. And due to it working great with the low resolution, there's no need for foveated rendering. Any old phone in a Cardboard should work fine. There's even a few porn movies which include data for driving robotic sex toys to match the VR action, though I don't have any of those toys, so can't comment.
The next stage could add VR cameras and long distance lovers.
There's screen door, resolution, and "mura". Current generation consumer headsets don't have enough resolution to be monitor replacements, especially not for crazy small font users like myself. Makes it hard to be a VR developer, I have to rip the headset off to read and write source code, then put it back on again to see the results. Fuzzy pixels might help with screen door, but the resolution is still low. "Mura" is caused by inconstant brightness levels of individual pixels, so that there is what looks like a cloudy texture that is fixed in your view, like wearing dirty glasses. All three get in the way of faking reality, unless you happen to be used to dirty glasses and looking through fly screens.
BTW, a Motorolo Moto Z with a Google Daydream is actually higher resolution than an Oculus Rift CV1. I dunno what the resolution of the above mentioned Pixel in a Daydream is off the top of my head. I only know about the Moto Z coz that's what I use in my Daydream. As mentioned in my previous post, I'm shortsighted, I can see tiny details if I take my glasses off, but I can't see individual pixels on my Moto Z (like I could on my Samsung GS3) unless I put it in the Daydream or Cardboard.
I'm shortsighted, I have distance glasses, reading glasses, and often go without glasses to peer closely at something to see the fine detail. Actually my reading glasses are purely for my own computer monitor, I don't need them for anything else, not even other peoples monitors, unless they use crazy small fonts like I do.
I have three varieties of VR headset, an Oculus DK2, a plastic Google Cardboard 1 compatible I bought from Aldi, and a Google Daydream View 2017. Oddly enough, the Oculus is best in my reading glasses, the Cardboard best with none, and the Daydream best with my distance glasses. The Oculus came with a few different lens sets for dealing with glasses, and I found the combination of the C lens with my reading glasses gave the best view. The Cardboard has enough focus adjustment that I could go without glasses to get the best view. The Daydream has fixed focus that assumes your vision is perfect, or perfectly corrected, so distance glasses it is.
The Cardboard and the Daydream I have been using to demonstrate VR to seniors over the last few months. Coz I only need my phone with these headsets, don't have to drag along an entire computer system. The Cardboards focus is both fiddly and hard to use if you don't have a lot of strength in your fingers, so I've generally been recommending they use their normal glasses with the Daydream. No one has complained about the Daydream and their glasses, a few complained about how hard it is to focus that particular model of Cardboard. The seniors have a variety of eye problems and suitable corrective glasses or contacts.
"You wake up one day to finding that your entire software package is a deck of cards, held together with gum and duct tape"
I may have been in software for a few more years than you. I remember when entire software packages actually where decks of cards. Though holding them together with gum and duct tape was a really bad idea, made them indigestible for the card readers.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
