Posts by Clive Galway

Shark versus shark in Barrier Reef DEATH MATCH

Date orders

>You mean like the way ISO 8601 defines the international standard date format - i.e. 2011-02-13?

YMD is a logical order. In this format, you can order alphabetically and things still sort chronologically. It also is logical in the sense that the units are in (reverse) order of unit size.

UK format - DMY is also logical (it is simply the inverse of the above). Again, (reverse) alphabetical sorting still yields the correct chronological order. It is also in order of ascending unit size (As we do with normal numbers) so is probably the most consistent system.

US style - MDY makes no logical sense at all. You are not even using unit sizes in order. It would be like saying 123 as "Three and One hundred and Twenty".

Kinect for Windows ships with SDK 1.0

£207???

You can buy an Xbox AND a Kinect for that!

On their own they are <£90.

Thailand can't wait to wield Twitter censorship hammer

A Good Thing?

Hang on a minute. If they say they will log every takedown with Chilling Effects, is this not a good thing in a way?

This will mean that every act of censorship on twitter will be broadcast to the rest of the world - the dirty laundry they do not wish aired in their own back yard will be cataloged in one place for all the world to see.

Microsoft builds Kinect into Asus laptops

I think your eyes dart around too much for that maybe?

Better use would be 6DOF head tracking ala TrackIR.

They built it into Forza 4 so it is definitely possible with Kinect.

I fail to understand why MS is not pushing head tracking hard - it's an obvious use of the technology and one that can easily be added to existing games. If they built it into BF3 or COD, I reckon Kinects would fly off the shelves. It's an easy in to the PC market as well, where gamers are less likely to buy a kinect as if they want to play a kinect style game they would use a console.

Admittedly, for full support in multiplayer (ie you can see other players' heads look around) you need extra bandwidth, but you don't have to support that.

Phone maker punts AA-powered blower

You do not need a SIM to make an emergency call...

But as previously said, you would be better off with a normal phone (Ideally a toughened model) with a wind-up charger (About £5 for a normal one, or £10 for one with a torch also).

Batteries do not like cold, I doubt an AA would last anything like as long if stored below the optimum storage temp of the battery.

Android-powered goggles bring virtual reality closer

I bet it still suffers from the same limitation as the Wii

Does it know how high (from the real world floor) your gestures are being made at?

ie can it tell the difference between a crouching hit and a standing one?

If not, epic fail - no 1:1 sword fighting game (The holy grail of motion controlled games IMHO) using this system then.

Steve Jobs action figure set for shop shelves

Accessories?

Does anyone know where to get a similarly sized cage, google t-shirt and android phone?

Damn you flatscreen monitors! I miss all the crazy junk on top of my screen!

Videogame piracy figures show decline

Online?

Err, hang on, CoD:MW and BF3 are online only pretty much. Are there cracks for these to let you play on any online server? If not, all the downloads for those titles do not indicate a lost sale for a start and should be ignored. In fact, they should probably count the other way as proof that people who own things legally still download pirate copies to avoid having DRMed versions of games you own (eg the RAZOR1911 crack for BF3 to let legit owners not have to use Origin).

Darth Vader dies peacefully in hospital

With regard to it not looking "real"

Surely a lightsabre fight wouldn't look like a sword fight? You wouldn't need *any* power behind a sabre strike as it would slice through anything with ease. Speed of the strike would matter to minimize the time the opponent had to act, but normal sword techniques would probably be pretty useless.

That being said, if sabres were real, I suspect the best method of attack would be to clash sabres, then slide your blade down theirs - the light sabre hilt has no guard, so the easiest kill would be to slice their fingers off during a clash.

Now where has realism got you?

Steve Jobs named most influential game guy – ever

OK so the list is awful and if you know anything about games, just about the worst advert for a games conference as you could imagine, but slagging off is easy to do - how about you come up with your own?

Here's mine - this is a more personal list - people and products that have affected my life in games:

I don't really know many of the figures involved in games, so I will just list 3:

1. Carmac

Wolf / Doom / Quake etc - showing what could be done graphically on current hardware.

2. Braben / Bell

Elite - way ahead of it's time.

3. Peter Molyneux

Populous / Magic Carpet etc - Originality of game design

Products:

1. MUD or maybe Ultima Online

Persistent virtual multiplayer worlds

2. HALs such as DirectX and OpenGL

Remember what life was like before them?

3. nVidia GeForce

First fully DX compatible consumer GPU

4. Wipeout (PS1) / Super Mario 64 (N64) / WinQuake (PC)

Poster boys for fully hardware accelerated 3D action games.

5. Nintendo Wii

For reminding us that gameplay and accessibility trump eye candy.

GoPro HD Hero 2

For the majority of users light is not a problem. Sure if you are doing caving or diving deep or something but most GoPro users use them outdoors in the daytime - and high framerate is for capturing high motion, which you don't tend to get as much underground or in a liquid as a guy flying through the hair and spinning like a madman.

They clearly upped the low light capabilities of the mk2 to help in this area, view stu4s first video for a good example of that.

Not what I had hoped for

120FPS @ 480p is pretty useless though, you can't really mix that in with HD footage and not notice the glaring loss in quality. I don't see many of the extreme sports crowd using 480p when 720p @ 60FPS is so beautiful.

Personally I think they should have gone for a 720i mode (120 FIELDS a second) so we could do a bob+weave deinterlace to end up with 120FPS 720p footage - I can't notice any loss in quality if done well (Virtualdub's "Deinterlace Smooth" filter is good if your NLE doesn't do it automatically) so this seems the best way to me to jack up the FPS with minimal loss of image quality. I guess they can't go much over 720p @ 60FPS due to bandwidth limitations of SD, but this would require little to no extra bandwidth.

Low light performance does seem significantly improved though judging by stu4's videos.

CERN boffins re-running neutrino speed test

My guess

Just a layman's stab, and I am not that well informed on the news item, but aren't the neutrinos meant to be passing through the centre of the earth?

As mass warps space-time, then thinking of the rubber sheet with a ball on it analogy, aren't the neutrinos maybe taking the straight short route (following the line where the undeformed rubber sheet would be if the ball wasnt there) rather than the long bendy route down the dip in the sheet, through the ball and up the other side.

Is there anything else that we can detect going in one side of the earth and coming out the other? If not, how can we attribute this FTL phenomenon to neutrinos? Maybe anything that has the ability to ignore matter is not following the same rules as everything else and so will appear to be travelling FTL.

Just wild speculation from someone with no more qualifaction to be asking the question apart from hair rather like Albert Einsteins - But hey, if you have the mad scientist look about you, that qualifies you in my book ;)

2009 game footage appears in ITV show as 1988 IRA vid

Video, or it didn't happen

45% of Android users to upgrade to rival phone OSes

Nothing of the sort

"39 per cent, the number of HTC handset owners who will said they'll stay with that vendor when they upgrade"

How does that mean that they will ditch Android? It just means that for 61% their next phone will not be HTC.

"call it the superior user experience the device offers" - Sounds like personal opinion labelled as fact to me... One that I disagree with. "More consistent look and feel" - maybe. Superior - no.

Finance software bug causes $217m in investor losses

One has to wonder...

Did he make money from the mistake? Surely if he knew about the error, he could work out what deals the software would erroneously make and then take a contrary position.

That would explain why he did not want to disclose the problem - it was a cash cow.

Virtual and real worlds collide in gamers' minds

Daily Mail comments for the article

I posted a link to the researchers' reaction on the comments section of the Daily Fail article.

Interestingly, it says at the top "The comments below have not been moderated".

However, when you submit a comment it says that they are subject to admin approval (Like this site) and my comment did not appear straight away, suggesting that it *is* moderated.

Surely they are not allowed to say the comments have not been moderated if they have? That's giving the impression that the forum is free speech when it isn't.

Valve pushes Portal freebie

learnwithportals.com down?

When I go there I get a holding page - "Business profile for learnhwithportals.com".

When I view the google cache for that page, it looks like the actual site.

Anyone else getting this?

FYI learnwithportals.com is translating to 205.178.189.129 for me

Microsoft merges Windows 8 with Xbox Live

For sure. The funny thing is, all generations of XBox and PS can use mice so there has been nothing stopping them from rectifying this for ages. All you need do is release an "FPS controller" with a trackball on it and the problem is solved. Hell, it may even be better than keyboard+mouse as you would have analogue strafe / run as well as look.

Yes, I know you can buy trackball controllers, but not *Official* ones.

End of UK local dialling in sight as numbers run out

And the rest

IIRC

It started off 01

Then went to 071 / 081

Then 0171 / 0181

Then 0207 / 0208

I remember the first stage anyway, cause that was my first programming job - writing DBASE IV code to trawl a database and convert 01 codes to 071 / 081

Hologram Live

No good on Moto Defy

Very low FPS, laggy. Strange seeing as the simplest scene only appears to be two texture mapped cubes and I can play 3D games such as crazy snowboard just fine.

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

RE: Android / WinMo6

There will never be a TomTom on Android - they signed a deal with Route66.

But you are right though. I was a loyal TomTom customer on WM6 but when they stalled and never released a version with live traffic (But it was on the 1st iPhone version), combined with the atrocious quality of their maps (One update I bought actually made things WORSE in my area) I totally lost all respect for their products.

Currently on Copilot 8 and really liking it. The recent text-to-speech update brings it on a par with TomTom's instructions (It previously seemed to lack a "Turn left THEN right" prompt) - although the voice is pretty poor at saying names right it is still helpful and helps you learn the names of roads you use.

Plus it has more features than I had on my TomTom on WM6 (The road type weightings system is great, especially with the profiles - if it is busy here in London I can set it to like side roads and hate main roads and it sends me down sneaky back routes)

So long TomTom. Don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

Sharp shows off 8K4K hi-res prototype telly

Do we need ANOTHER aspect ratio?

All this upping of resolution is nice but why do we need ANOTHER aspect ratio? Between cinema aspects, regular 4:3, widescreen 16:9/16:10 we have plenty of standards - do we really need to add 2:1 into the mix?

Man builds gadget to silence annoying TV pundits

Need a video based equivalent

For my ultimate plan.

Imagine something like this but it is able to recognise people from the image stream.

Then wire in a light gun and some custom code and you have yourself a great game!

Assign points to your most hated celebs and whenever they appear on screen, grab the gun and start blasting away!

Of course you would want a range of simulated weapons. You would obviously need something with an area of effect should Jedward come on the screen at the same time (Mind you, they tend to huddle, so you could get lucky with one rifle round)

ISS 'naut shoots first ever 3D footage in space

We don't need no steenking titles

"shot aboard the International Space Station using a futuristic shoebox-sized camera developed by the ESA"

Shoebox sized? Futuristic? One would hope it would have some special features else surely a pair of GoPros with a 3D kit would have been cheaper and WAY smaller.

Something to do with nasty radiation in space?

Samsung plops out waterproof smartphone

bath usage

Unfortunately capacitive screens don't seem to work too well when wet.. Drops of water on the screen can trigger clicks and stuff and forget about using the touchscreen underwater. (Well, if my defy is anything to go by but I don't see why it would be any different)

Who cares about the software?

It's Android - root it, flash a new ROM etc. MotoBlur went off mine in like a millisecond ;)

I am currently running Cyanagenmod 7 on mine - loving the Gingerbread!

The Defy is great and i suspect this phone will probably be just as good - just don't believe the hype about the scratch proofing and get a screen protector.

Fujitsu installs Windows 7... on a phone

Full fat linux on a Defy

I have a Defy and love it.

If you want a "full fat" linux, there is now a one click installer for Debian:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=962974

It doesn't overwrite the OS, so you can switch between android and debian.

X-COM UFO: Enemy Unknown

Playing multiplayer Chaos online

There used to be more rewrites around, but the only one I know of that is currently active is this one:

http://www.duelboard.com/old/

It's futuristic instead of wizards, but it's basically the same game.

Ordnance Survey, other gov databases move to Biz dept

No it isn't

It only goes down to 1:50k - no 1:25k, so it is nigh on useless for most outdoorsy type stuff.

Yes they do have data at that scale, but no contours etc so for hiking, riding etc it's useless.

It's nice to see that they have finally opened up the boundary info though. Distance based clustering of markers on a map is technically swanky and all, but having boundary data to do heirachically ordered markers by region is a more useful solution.

ALK CoPilot Live Premium HD

TomTom for Android will never come

TomTom have partnered with Route66 instead:

http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=549627

And I am looking for a replacement for CoPilot 8 as I don't like it. Does the map in the new version zoom in a bit more at junctions? CoPilot is way too unclear for me. Also the buttons are WAY too fiddly.

Currently trialling Sygic instead. Unfortunately it crashes a lot at the moment but hopefully they will get it sorted soon. It shows much more promise and the walking mode is great (3D buildings, e-compass support).

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

"Monster cable" warmer picture

Are there separate pins for R G and B in HDMI? Surely not? I would have thought that all image data would be packed into one data stream?

If so, there is no way to get a "warmer" image from an HDMI cable - that would require errors on all bits bumping up the red channel by a certain amount or something like that - statistically impossible.

You either get the pixel transmitted right, or a (probably random) error. The same hue shift for all pixels would never happen.

Blighty gets gold-dispensing ATM

Laundry machine

Put in fake / stolen money and get out untraceable, compact gold. Genius!

Sony says virtual reality is virtually a reality

Kinect solution?

Isn't it way simpler to go the TrackIR route but use a kinect for the head tracking? No need for glasses and the display is as good as whatever you can afford.

Unless they integrate head tracking into the glasses then I don't really see the point. Even then you open a new can of worms as you have issues of visibility of the controller.

Boffins take REMOTE CONTROL of HUMAN HAND

Do it right, FFS

Sod non-invasive techniques, what this project needs is a rectally located input device.

Human glove-puppet!

Student suspended for posting random satire on YouTube

Epic FAIL

@They'll get him... - Nah, that's fair use.

Well that one backfired horribly. They were "concerned" for the image of the school, but screwed it up so badly that they portrayed an even worse image of the school *world- wide*.

Apple sues teenager for white iPhone conversion kits

How can it be infringement?

It's an ORIGINAL apple part painted white.

It's not a knock off part.

It would be like sueing someone for infringement who is selling spare parts.

It just so happens that the spare part has a bit of paint on it. Where do you draw the line? If I buy a normal spare case and there is a slight defect giving it a blemish, is the vendor now guilty of infringment? No.

Dirt 3

<Insert title here>

As stated above, you don't *have* to do the Gymkhana sections, you can amass points in other areas.

I am up to season 3, been playing on hardest levels and always using the car that gave the most rep points (ie hardest to pass bonuses).

Have gotten 1st in everything, except maybe some of the Gymkhana levels where I would only get silver or bronze - some of them are very hard. The rest I found maybe a bit overly easy though.

Personally, I think the Gym levels are OK. Yes, they are hard, but I find my skill level going up as a result of playing them. I feel that having to be so precise pays dividends when you move make to rally.

The truck/buggy stages are better than dirt 2 also. Less of them and the vehicles behave more like rally cars (Especially if you lower and stiffen the suspension) so there's not really much difference.

Currently playing with an XBOX controller. My old wheel broke and I am waiting until I can sort something with an analogue handbrake before I get a new one (WHY do they not make these?).

Sony evolves card-less Augmented Reality tech

By "No Marker"

I think they mean it doesn't require the card to be in view or be marked with a special symbol. Existing AR tech in use by consoles etc uses the cards to supplement the data from a gyro / e-compass, but cannot work out the subtle nuances of movement from the camera alone. This can.

It's not totally new tech (see Imagineer's "Mocha") but to do this in realtime on a handheld console would actually be rather impressive.

It's like the difference between a standard wii controller and kinect. You can sort of do the same thing but kinect knows a lot more info about you rather than having to make rather large assumptions.

Designer punts ultimate customisable keyboard

Physical version already exists

The Ergodex DX1.

http://ergodex.com

US Navy produces smart, cheap 6kg fire+forget missile

They obviously need a low cost solution BAD

As they clearly don't have enough cash to even deinterlace their promo.

JVC Everio GS-TD1 3D camcorder

Why you want interlaced mode

If a camera shoots in interlaced mode at the same field (frame) rate as progressive, I often go for interlaced.

Why? Because you can then use a bob+weave deinterlace to get double framerate footage, for silky smooth slow motions. Done well, image quality doesn't suffer too much either, especially at high resolutions.

With this camera, you could do a 25FPS movie with quarter speed slowmos at full frame rate. In 1080p HD. Mmmm nice :)

TomTom sorry for giving customer driving data to cops

Another nail in the coffin for TomTom

Funny that they should get in trouble for selling the data they use to populate the "IQ Routes" service (Real time traffic data from phone info) which IIRC is also largely scraped from cell mast usage info sold to it by ?Vodafone?.

The amusing thing is that winmo, despite being the first phone OS to get a TomTom app, has NEVER gotten access to this data, as TomTom never released a version with IQ Routes for that platform. Annoyingly, they then released an iPhone version with IQRoutes but still left their existing winmo customers out in the cold. After 3+ years of waiting, I finally gave up and moved to Android, but TomTom have announced no version for that either, so I now use CoPilot.

It's your own stupid fault - if you released an IQRoutes version for WinMo and/or Android, you would have a revenue stream from that (IQRoutes is a monthly subscription) and wouldn't have to sell the data to the cops to generate the much needed revenue.

Goodbye TomTom, don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

Portal 2

Good, but maybe a little light on content

I have finished it in single player, but have not begun coop yet.

The sp game is good, if maybe a little short for a full priced game.

Unfortunately, there are no advanced or challenge levels like the first game, so replayability is limited, which is a shame.

No doubt mods and DLC will remedy these situations in the longer term but a little more replay value while I waited for friends to buy it would have been nice.

Nude Florida man in gunfight with police SWAT robot

Clearly

He knew the RotM was coming, and the unannounced entrance of a bot into his bedroom prompted him to defend himself.

This man should be held up as a shining beacon of hope - without more like him, when the day comes we are all surely doomed.

A fifth of Europeans can't work out how much a TV costs

Surely the title should be "A fifth of europeans can't do maths"?

I fail to see why they confused the issue with mention of TVs, its a simple maths problem and has nothing to do with consumerism.

Google woos enterprises to Android with new security offerings

Android Exchange Syncing a poor implementation

It does not support changes to contacts (Make a change to a contact on PC or phone and it does not sync)

Also, changes to mail (Delete or refile in another folder) are not synced.

About the only thing I am disappointed with on android, otherwise it is great!

James Cameron to amp up Avatar frame rate

Bring it on

Of course it will probably clog the interwebs as it will further double the size of the video files being shared via bittorrent (As if 3D wasn't enough).

It probably won't make any difference anyway, with most action films these days it seems, the net result will just be that we will have 60FPS 3D shaky camera action scenes. Oh joy.

Zomm wireless leash

Nice idea, but £80 way too much

Hopefully someone will make a cheap knockoff for about £20 and I may get one.

Could do without the speakerphone and all that junk, just the alarm would do.