Posts by Clive Galway

Tough Banana Pi: a Raspberry Pi for colour-blind diehards

"Gigabit Ethernet is also a very welcome edition"

Edition?

Surely you mean Addition?

English FAIL.

NASA 'nauts have a go on Star Trek replicator IN SPAAAAACE (sort of)

Re: Hmmmm Chicken and Egg

Two printers.

Ten excellent FREE PC apps to brighten your Windows

Re: 7+ Taskbar tweaker

+1 for 7+TT

I also turn "Combine Icons" the hell off.

Plus if you have multi-monitor, add to that "Dual Monitor Taskbar" to add a taskbar to your second monitor.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualmonitortb/

Pitchfork-wielding villagers hunt hairy shapeshifters in One Night Ultimate Werewolf

BSG boardgame

On a similar note, check out the Battlestar Galactica boardgame.

The game has a very good mechanic that lets the bad guys sabotage the game, whilst giving the good guys a way to work out who the bad guy(s) are.

Also, it can get to the point where you know exactly who the bad guys are, but doing something about it becomes a race against time.

Highly recommended.

BBC clamps down on illicit iPlayer watchers

I meant exactly the opposite.

eg for example, the use of proprietary software (Flash / Air) over open equivalents such as HTML5.

BBC DID take that attitude over iPlayer on mobile devices - for a while, the ONLY mobile device you could run it on was an iDevice.

Isn't there something in the BBC charter that says all programmes must be viewable on non-proprietary equipment?

I know the BBC treat this with contempt anyway (eg when the only mobile devices you could use were iDevices back in 2008, iPlayer 1.0 which used Adobe AIR only ... ) but can we not slap them with a complaint or something?

Painfully trendy: Someone just spent $200k on ebola.com

ISIS TLD?

With ISIS setting up a caliphate, maybe they should apply for their own TLD?

Better still, someone should set one up and squat it just to wind them up.

Anyone fancy being the WHOIS contact for mohammed-school-for-girls.co.isis?

Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?

Where on earth did she get the idea that the internet is "Entirely produced by men".?

This statement belittles the contribution of every woman working in the industry.

Red Bull does NOT give you wings, $13.5m lawsuit says so

A real shame - I don't like the product, but I have a great deal of respect for what the company does with it's advertising dollars. They put out a hell of a lot of amazing content and the branding in the videos is not in your face - in fact you often have to look quite hard to see someone consuming their product in their videos.

Plenty of the world's top extreme sport athletes have been helped to get the exposure they deserve by RB, including our very own and insanely talented Danny Macaskill.

TL:DR - If ever there were a company whose advertising I approve of, it is RB.

Gaming supremo creates maps that turn real world into Sim City

Lemmings / Psygnosis

Psygnosis only published Lemmings, it was not an in-house project.

Same with most of the decent stuff they released - unfortunately they purchased lots of Silicon Graphics workstations early on and so were fixated with justifying that purchase by churning out lots of FMV / pre-rendered games, which were universally awful and often got canned or had very limited releases.

It wasn't until they were bought out by Sony and so got involved in PSX dev that they started to work on modern realtime 3D games such as Wipeout.

Interesting factoid:

Carmageddon was pitched as a proposed internal project for the Camden studio, but management turned it down. Thankfully Adrian Curry then quit and took the idea elsewhere.

Chumps stump up $1 MEELLLION for watch that doesn't exist

Input device?

They should merge this product with those projection keyboards.

Display output on the back of your hand, and type / mouse with your other hand.

Viola! the perfect display / input method for wearables.

Failing that, sell them in pairs - project half of the keyboard onto each palm and type letters with the relevant thumb.

Pop-up ad man: SORRY we made such a 'hated tool', netizens

"our intentions were good"

Good for the car manufacturer.

It was not, in any way shape or form, good for the user - some poor guy was trying to choke the chicken and he had bloody pop-ups covering the porn browser.

How are you meant to close the pop-up pre ad-blockers without getting the mouse icky?

SynoLocker Trojan crime gang: We QUIT this gig

Scam?

What motivation is there for them to hand over the keys (if they exist)?

If they are "going out of business" then failure to honor the agreement is not going to affect any reputation they care about.

No Apple fanbois here: Man United BANS iPads from Old Trafford

OK, So I am no fan of Apple, but that was clickbait if ever I saw it.

Nothing specifically to do with apple whatsoever that would justify that strapline.

LulzSec supergrass Sabu led attacks against Turkey – report

FUBAR

That is all there is to say really.

Japanese boffins invent 4.4 TREEELLION frames per second camera

Re: We're gonna need a bigger hard drive...

The Matrix bullet time effect of appearing to pause time while a pan occurs is not dependent on frame rate, it utilizes multiple cameras all taking a frame at the same time and can be done with a stills camera.

Tiny transforming bots: Meet these self-assembling 'thoughtful' droids

Re: Can master electronics / robotics...

You spend all that time developing something new and interesting, and when the time comes to show it off to the world, you omit to do something which takes you an extra 10 seconds.

OK, so they may not know what deinterlacing is, or why they would need it, but surely one look at the video would tell you something was wrong, and a quick google would tell you what the problem is and how to fix it.

Seriously, would you let what was quite possibly the culmination of your life's work be represented in that way?

Can master electronics / robotics...

But deinterlacing the video is clearly a bit beyond them!

Why does anyone even record in anything but progressive these days? What did they use? MiniDV??

So '90s!

Brit balloon bod Bodnar circumnavigates planet

Re: Boffin?

Not just for R/C hobbyists.

His USB controllers are awesome for custom built PC joysticks, or for retro-fitting an existing joystick with upgraded Hall Effect sensors / better resolution.

CIA infosec guru: US govt must buy all zero-days and set them free

If you start a policy of buying all zero days and making them public...

... the price would go up. Probably exponentially. Supply and Demand and all that.

If the person who discovers it can now only charge once, he's gonna make damned sure to get the most out of it.

Attackers raid SWISS BANKS with DNS and malware bombs

Seriously, El Reg, sort it the fuck out and hire a proof reader. If you have one, fire them.

I am going to have to start referring to you as The Regsitter.

Phone charging log helps to convict murderer

All he had to say was that "He got up for a piss in the night, noticed his phone was low on juice and plugged it in".

Then how come he did not notice his wife was missing?

Seems to me that if the guy was stupid enough to take his phone with him, he would not have switched it off.

Was he not more incriminated by which cells he connected to while it was off charge?

FBI: We found US MILITARY AIRCRAFT INTEL during raid on alleged Chinese hacker

That Su guy has been busy!

The Russians seem to like him as well, they have been naming planes after him for years!

Read the proposed US ASTEROIDS Act to green-light mining IN SPAAAACE

Demand for resources in orbit

I think a lot of you miss the point when you are thinking about metals and such.

There is plenty of demand for resources in orbit. Currently we ship them up from the surface at a huge cost per kilo - way in excess of what that resource is worth on earth.

If someone were to start mining in space and selling fuel, oxygen and water in orbit - there would be buyers.

Correct me if I am wrong, but does splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen require anything else except power?

You probably wouldn't even need to bring it all the way back to earth. Fuel stations at strategic points in the solar system would probably be of value already.

USA to insist on pre-flight mobe power probe

What are they gonna do if it has no juice?

Will they hold the device until you get back?

What if it is a one-way ticket?

Would you be offered a refund on your flight?

Seems pretty unworkable to me.

Today's get-rich-quick scheme: Build your own bank

Get rid of it? No.

Provide an alternative? Yes.

I don't see the problem with Fractional Banking

The problem is surely with the fraction used?

What fraction would it have to go to in order to remain profitable and be able to provide loans etc?

If you wrote the code, you could surely set up multiple banks (or just multiple account types) where the customer chooses the fraction, and thus balanced the risk / reward levels themselves?

Want a 100% account? You may have to pay some monthly charges, you would have to pay for all card issues, no overdraft facility, etc etc.

90% account? No fees, free card issues, does overdrafts.

Simples.

Tor is '90 per cent of the net' claims City of London Police Commish – and he's dead wrong

FOI?

Can we maybe not slap them with an FOI request or something that would force them to acknowledge this statement as inaccurate?

Something like requesting a breakdown of the 90%?

DOCX disaster recovery: How I rescued my wife from XM-HELL

Simpler way to fix DOCX files...

Open it in Open Office and save.

Ukrainian teen created in lab passes Turing Test – famous nutty prof

I feel like I am in a Turing Test....

... pretty much any time I join an online game.

Gunmaker finds KILLER APP for Google Glass

Re: Marketing rubbish

The fact that future soldier failed has NOTHING to do with the viability of a remote view gunsight - the goals for that were way higher.

This is not a hard problem to solve. All the tech needed has already been developed by to the extreme sports / home security camera industry.

We now have ruggedized, high framerate, high resolution cameras with IRNV capability readily available - surely all you need to do is place one of these behind a conventional sight and you have a remote sight?

If you used something like a reflex sight that was relatively unaffected by eye position, then you have a ton of tolerance, so could probably just attach a wireless barrel cam with pipe clips and it would be fine.

If you did it in this form-factor, it would be simple to retro-fit to existing weapons and also mean the camera would serve other uses apart from a remote sight:

General purpose periscope

Combine it with a collapsible pole (like a quickpod) to be able to easily look over walls, under cars etc.

Sentry mode

Repurpose the "capture on motion" functionality of the action cam to also send an audio alert to the operator. Camera could be left watching the squads back, and they get an alert if anything moves and they can watch the recording of what moved.

Audio uses

If you could get a cam within earshot of enemy troops, you may be able to gather valuable intel.

A lot of security cams provide two-way audio, there would probably be many ways of re-purposing this. For example, you could trick the enemy into thinking you were one place by sending audio to a remote cam.

Yeah the military generally ruggedizes stuff more than commercial gear, but action cams are widely in use by troops already (as personal items) so they are clearly close enough - by the very nature of their use you would want them to be plentiful (Each soldier would probably want 2 or 3), so I fail to really see what the problem is. I guess it is more a case that the military would rather not have loads of cameras floating around on the battlefield, for PR / Security reasons.

The Pirate Bay's stor ost Peter Sunde collared at farm in Sweden

Re: I'm lost...

Although it had significant upvotes, I downvoted this comment, and this is my reasoning why:

Whilst I agree with your sentiment, your examples suck.

If "TheOpenPatchRepository.Com" was hosting copyrighted content (Let us say cracked EXEs or even patches for normal EXEs that cracked copyrighted software) then yes, they would be liable for facilitating copyright infringement.

Facebook does require user accounts.

Facebook does facilitate sharing of copyrighted content, but not without the owner's consent.

I am pretty sure it complies with any DMCA requests etc, so I fail to see your point.

TheRegister does not let you share files.

If "WeTheGoverned.org" existed and facilitated sharing of files, then yes, it may be liable if it does not adhere to the laws on such things.

Please, if you are going to fight in the corner of people who believe that copyright laws and enforcement methods need reform, at least try and present an argument that holds some water.

ASUS launches 5-in-1 Android Windows Phone laptop tablet (breathe)

Patent troll's wet dream?

There's got to be something in that device that pisses off just about anybody!

And just about EVERYTHING in it pisses off Apple.

Watch Dogs: Eat, sleep, hack, repeat

Re: Avoid for now

I don't play FPS with a controller. Period. Especially in multi player games.

I had a guy invade me who was obviously using a controller. I circle strafed around him and LOLed.

There's nothing inherently stopping mouse from working fine in the game, it is just sloppy coding - which from an AAA title is unforgivable.

Avoid for now

As usual, the PC version feels like it was added as an afterthought, with no decent QA and no thought to the control scheme.

UI almost unusable with mouse.

This game features just about the worst implementation of a "rose" menu ever seen for the weapon select wheel.

If you wish to select the down-left item, and move the mouse down left (thus highlighting the item you want), but then move the mouse *ever so slightly* left, you will select the left item not the down left one.

It also uses the same method for a grid select menu - and there is no indication of how far you need to move the mouse up/down/left/right to select items. Imagine trying to select from a grid of buttons with a hidden mouse pointer and only a highlight on the current item.

Terrible drops in framerate - for me car driving is impossible, the game freezes every time you turn a corner (i7-930 @ 4Ghz, 6GB, GTX 660Ti)

Do not buy yet - wait for it to stabilize and come down in price.

Valve says no Steam Machines until 2015, fingers crossed

Wrong move IMO

I'm sorry, but much as I like the sound of what they are trying to achieve with their controller, I am not convinced it will be ideal.

There are no physical ABXY type buttons on one side of the controller - I presume either the left or right pad can function in this way?

Whatever, you would not get decent haptic feedback like you would for a physical button. They might be able to emulate *some* feedback, but it will not be comparable to a real button I would imagine.

They should just do what console controller manufacturers have been too scared / stupid to do: Make a modular controller.

Take 1 xbox controller design.

Replace the following parts with a socket:

D-Pad, L / R analog sticks, ABXY button block.

Make said D-Pad, Analog sticks and ABXY button blocks plug-in modules that go into the sockets.

Also make a trackball plug-in module.

Voila - the ultimate controller. Left or right-handed, analog stick and/or trackball, configure the layout any way you want, user is happy as they do not have to replace an entire controller if a button or stick wears out.

Linux app lets you control fruit fly brains - with frikkin' LASERS

Re: Frikkin???

Go watch Austin Powers.

You know all those resources we're about to run out of? No, we aren't

Re: I divide recycling into three types

I agree - recycling for recycling's sake (especially giving incentives to make it financially viable, when it isn't) seems stupid to me.

Landfill is not a long-term problem surely, mining rights are already being sold for landfill sites, and as technology progresses this will probably only become more widespread.

What the frag? Earn millions as the world watches you SLAY rivals

Re: Not a good review

Also, you spent £800 odd on GPUs and then ALSO paid £200 so you could do CPU encoding?

A grand, and you didn't even research a better way of getting hardware encoding?

The mind boggles.

Re: Not a good review

AFAIK there is an equivalent to ShadowPlay available for AMD devices. Google for "RadeonPro". The author recently joined Raptr, so functionality is going to be folded into "Gaming Evolved" I guess?

As for the FPS hit...

It depends on where the bottleneck is.

If your GPU is the bottleneck, you may see some loss of performance, but seeing as it is dedicated chippery that does the encode (Which is not used for normal gameplay) then probably not much.

Also, losing a little GPU performance is easy - you can just turn down the detail a little, I never want full detail anyway, stuff like bloom and motion blur make the game harder and so are the first to go. All I care about is draw distance and FPS.

In the main game I play at the moment, I the bottleneck is CPU (Engine is CryEngine) and I notice zero difference in shadowplay mode or manual mode.

You would certainly see a significant amount less CPU usage between a GPU encode and a lossless encode - even simple Run Length Encoding is going to be more CPU intensive than any of the hardware based solutions. Not to mention your disk I/O being hammered by all those writes.

If you had an Intel chip (>= haswell?) then there is also Intel QuickSync. If you have a GPU limited game, then you can switch from the hardware GPU encoding to hardware CPU encoding if using a capture app that supports it (Such as Mirillis Action).

So yeah, that 500GB HDD was a pretty pointless buy also.

Re: Not a good review

I realised what I wrote above is maybe not clear in point (1)

What I mean is that these devices can stop your main display from functioning to it's full abilities.

If you use one of:

Resolution != 1080p (eg higher res such as 1920x1200, 2K/4K, non 16:9 res such as 1680x1050)

Refresh rate > 60hz (100/120hz display, 3D shutter glasses etc, or you simply demand 60FPS as a minimum not a maximum)

Then you are stuffed. You will simply get 1080p 60FPS on your main display.

Even if you are willing to put up with this for recording, it means re-wiring your PC each time you want to record. Compare that to ShadowPlay where I can decide to record something AFTER it happened and it is just no contest.

Interesting idea for an article / BOFH epsiode?

"Privacy implications of ShadowPlay"

Is ShadowPlay the ultimate "Anti-Boss-Key"?

If your sysadmin could walk up to your computer and dump the last 20mins of desktop activity as a video, how do you feel about that?

Not a good review

This review is a fail for a number of reasons:

1) You are capped at 1080p, and probably also limted to 16:9 aspect ratios.

The last Roxio box I checked out did not support:

1920x1200

1680x1050

Any refresh rate > 60FPS

Audio support unless you piped your audio via HDMI (I do not). If you use a DVI port for your main display - no audio.

I dunno about you, but for me, 60FPS is a MINIMUM, not a MAXIMUM!

And 1080i for the Rocket? Please, don't make me laugh. You even need to "export" to get an H264 file???

2) Again, the last roxio box I checked out did not play well with multi monitor.

3) Inaccurate information / Bias

"The reason why these boxes are so great is that there’s no lag – unlike if you were to run Fraps". What the fuck are you smoking? How does a video capture utility cause "lag"?

Input lag? Apart from potentially lowering FPS, nope, not interfering here.

Network lag? Not doing anything on network, so no.

The plain fact of the matter is that this is obsolete tech for PC gamers.

Why the hell am I going to pay money and re-wire my PC, when all I need to do is enable ShadowPlay in Geforce Experience?

Shadowplay gives me, for FREE:

ANY resolution or aspect ratio recording.

No noticeable FPS hit.

"Record from the past" functionality so I can decide to capture AFTER the event.

Video files dumped as an H264 MP4 right to your hard disk. Do you really want to be bothering to transfer Gigs of files via USB??

The added bonus that with an Nvidia card it will also enable game streaming, so I can use a thin client steam box in the front room to play full-fat games from my main PC.

For under £130 you can get an nVidia GPU that will do all this - these boxes are utterly useless for a PC Gamer and only any use for console peeps.

Powershell Terminals

Worth a mention - AHK scripts

One other scripting tool I have found useful is AutoHotKey.

Ostensibly a scripting language for macros, it can actually do so much more and can be extremely useful for automation.

Last time I used it in business was where we wanted custom per-desk phone backgrounds - desk number etc (And ideally to be able to change them on a regular basis - ie hotdesk status) but the only software we had capable of changing the backgrounds was clunky at best and other solutions were not cheap.

AHK provided a number of features that allowed me (~3 hrs) to code a simple GUI app that could operate the clunky phone software (At a speed way quicker than any human could do it) and perform all the batch upload etc functionality we required - simply click browse and point it to a data source...

If you can get past the occasionally quirky syntax - it's two languages merged, so sometimes its like "command, parm, parm" and sometimes its like "command(parm, parm)", and variables associated with GUI items are always global - then this can be an incredibly useful trick to have in your box. You get a lot of the functionality you would with a more full-fat solution like C# (you can even call DLLs and stuff) in a shell-script type format, so most scripts should be understandable by anyone who has any coding knowledge.

Also indispensable for gamers ;)

London cabbies to offer EVEN WORSE service in protest against Uber

Ah right. I was pretty sure on the "No hailing" rule, but wasn't quite so sure on the "No meter" rule.

Thanks for setting me straight.

AFAIK, A taxi with a meter is a "Hackney Carriage", no matter where in the UK it is.

Only hackney carriages are legally allowed to be flagged down on the street for business. Other cabs (Mini cabs) MUST be pre-booked (eg via the phone).

Hence the meter - a pre-booked cab is a pre-arranged price with base. In a hackney carriage, the price is determined by the meter. The other giveaway is the light. If it has a "for hire" light that indicates availability, it will be a Hackney Carriage.

Next time you get in a taxi with a meter, even if it is not an LTI taxi (The classic london taxi design), check the license and it should say "Hackney Carriage".

This is probably why they are pissed - they know that their monopoly is going to be gone soon.

All Uber need to do is put a QR code on the side of it's minicabs and suddenly you can legally "Hail" a minicab. Scanning the QR code will pre-book a SPECIFIC minicab and legally allow him to pick up someone he passed.

Re: you're having a tin mate...

So the minicab driver working for Uber will not be paying UK fuel levies?

He will not be spending his earnings in the country he lives?

Your arguments are no different for the competition, so you make no point at all...

Amazon granted patent for taking photos against a white background – seriously

Someone needs to patent a "method by which money can be extracted from business whereby a document is issued that purports to give a company sole rights to an existing product or process"

The USPTO might learn the meaning of "Prior Art" when taken to court for infringing on a patent that they issued...

Norwegians trial Oculus Rift in tanks: The ultimate battlefield simulator

Fail

So the tank driver has to put on a headset mid-engagement?

Seems to induce motion sickness - quite possibly due to the lag and the lack of proper 6DoF tracking in the OR.

Lack of resolution a problem at distances.

All problems that would be sorted by using an optical head tracker instead?

They already wear head-gear, no problem adding tracking dots or IR sources to their helmets.

Would give full 6DoF with much lower latency.

Could use whatever screen you wanted, resolution would not be a problem.

But fine, go ahead and use the tech owned by a US megacorp who are probably not in bed with the NSA, I am sure that is way smarter than just using a couple of IR LEDs, an IR camera, a bit of open source software and a screen of your choosing.