Posts by John Gamble

SPEARS joins the 19-mile-high club: Intimate snaps

Trees

I like how the playmonaut, with all that open space to chose from, went straight for the trees.

And for those who haven't done it yet, for God's sake don't click on the soundtrack. Just don't.

It's all in the wrist: How to write apps for the Pebble smartwatch

Follow The Bouncing Ball

That's a lot of code for a bouncing ball.

Yep. It always is (he said, remembering the first Macintosh with a certain amount of trauma bubbling to the surface).

Dear Linus, STOP SHOUTING and play nice - says Linux kernel dev

Re: It's a bit like a kitchen

Wow, you really think that's reality? Kitchens don't work like that.

(Now that the non-disclosure agreements have expired, the explanation for participant behavior was found to be simple and obvious: sleep deprivation and alcohol. Yeah, real professional set-up you're filming there.)

Ashes latest: Don't show Ozzies THIS perfect spin bowl science ... too late

Re: The Real Spin Doctors

Tch. We have cricket in the U.S., at least in my geographical area. No trip to Manchester (or paying for a premium sports channel) required.

Granted, watching the game and understanding the game are two entirely different things...

The Real Spin Doctors

This is some nice work. Given that for a long while there were people who insisted that a (baseball) curveball motion was an optical illusion (LIFE magazine, July 27th 1953), it is good to see some actual math.

OFFICIAL: Humans will only tolerate robots as helpful SLAVES

Re: "a human who takes on an android as his partner "

"P.S. : where'd the bloody link function go to ?"

Maybe it's the ".ord" instead of ".org" that has the software befuddled?

Star Wars missile intercept fails for fifth year running

Re: 5 Years? Try 5 *decades*

"... which got the Prez his Ronnie the Raygun nickname."

Minor quibble -- Ronald Reagan had that name applied to him long before "star wars" -- you can hear it being used on the Woodstock movie. It may have been a one-off comment instead of a true nickname, but it still preceded SDI.

Google's JavaScript challenger gains better tools, performance

Re: Compatibility

"I may be misunderstanding you, but isn't that what JQuery* is for?"

I agree for the most part, but the asker may have been wondering about maintainability also.

I'm rather wondering how Dart compares with Coffescript myself (I know a little Coffeescript, I know nothing of Dart).

Drug gang hacks into Belgian seaport, cops seize TONNE of smack

Life and Fiction

"The whole scheme, eerily similar to the set-up of the plot of season 2 of The Wire, ..."

Also the Donald Westlake novel, "Dancing Aztecs" (although what's being smuggled is a valuable artifact, and the scheme is set before pervasive use of computers). Now I need to check out "The Wire", which gets recommended a lot and which I still haven't seen.

Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

It Used to be the Unix/VMS Divide

My first "real" job was on VMS for a well-regarded engineering firm. One thing I learned is that fighting the philosophy of the design is a waste of time -- the OS wasn't Unix? Fine, use what the OS provides, stop trying to make it behave in a way it wasn't designed for. As I shifted between jobs using VMS and jobs using Unix, I came to appreciate and embrace the differences. This became particularly important as VMS started adding security features that Unix hadn't figured out yet.

Eventually Unix won, of course (and got more secure). I think that's a deserved win, but every once in a while I do think "What would VMS do?" and it helps in the design process.

Review: Philips Hue network enabled multicolour lightbulbs

Re: Killer fact!

I've seen this claim before. It never appears to be backed by actual facts (the last graph I saw "backing" this claim only went back five years). It's especially egregious since home use, street use, and commercial use are three separate animals whose needs have changed over the decades, yet we never see data distinguishing between the three.

Re: Why not intelligent sockets?

They're out there. Searching for Zigbee receptacles will get you a long list.

There are also a few projects that have successfully gotten Kickstarter support that went with WIFI protocols instead. I've supported a few (and am currently using two of them, Twine and Pebble), and with luck the Ube outlets and switches will be part of my home set-up.

Google releases Glass' roots, warns it may turn specs to bricks

Re: So, ...

You could at least have the decency to attach an "I'll get my coat" icon to that.

Now it gets serious: Fracking could RUIN BEER

Re: She needs to visit Colorado

Is that supposed to be a convincing argument?

How much did he drink? Does he plan to drink a full glass every day for years, to simulate the effects on the people actually affected by it? Did he have the contents of the fracking liquid analyzed so his doctor could advise him on the relative safety of even a single drink?

Nah. He just drank it like an idiot.

BT Tower is just a relic? Wrong: It relays 18,000hrs of telly daily

Re: "I think BT tower would fit in with any of our major cities."

Buy it? Hmm, might be out of my price range, but tell you what. I'm willing to trade you one of our bridges in Brooklyn for the tower. Toss in a couple jars of Marmite and you've got a deal.

Intel's answer to ARM: Customisable x86 chips with HIDDEN POWERS

Re: Z80 ?

Yup, and as AndrueC said, "they" (in my experience assembly language instructors) would warn against using them. There was a certain "I know the secret code!" thrill about knowing them, but I'm not a teenager anymore, and getting code -- especially assembly code -- to work everywhere soon hammered any idea of using them out of my coding practice.

Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

Lifetime ban from Amazon (was Re: alternatively...)

Ooh, there's a threat.

I already get most of my books from non-Amazon sources (Calibre itself will find sources for you, and there are still these things called "bookstores" out in the real world). My e-reader is not a Kindle, and just in general there is no reason to yoke oneself to Amazon anyway.

Flexible flywheel offers cheap energy storage

Re: Weebles Wobble But Energy Has to Go Somewhere

Some of those problems were solved in the seventies -- a flywheel doesn't have to have the same stability as a hard drive, although you're right that there will be energy loss.

Indeed, even the "flexible" aspect was done in the seventies, although the designs I saw had the fibers spinning radially out from the axis, rather than wrapped around the circumference. Bearings, vacuum containers, yes, this is old technology probably re-written with modern materials.

So probably most of your questions have been dealt with. The main questions are whether, even after all that, will the energy density still be good enough to make this worthwhile.

Shark-tooth war cutlery reveals tale of fishy extinction in Pacific

Re: Or you could consider a simpler explanation, TRADE

Didn't read the article, did you.

"First, there are no records among the historical, archaeological, or linguistic literature of exchange among the Gilbert Islands and people in the Solomon Islands (the nearest location for C. sorrah) or Fiji (for C. obscurus). Second, the Gilbertese had a well-developed shark fishery using a variety of techniques and exploiting a variety of habitats [21], reducing the need to import a locally obtainable resource."

Wealthy London NIMBYs grit teeth, welcome 'ugly' fibre cabinets

Re: At least they're getting fibre

SO IS INDY!!

Off-the-shelf optics kit tweaked for bonkers performance

Optic Circuits

“the fourier transform, the parallel-serial conversion, cyclic prefix insertion – we do all this in optics”

Okay, the light fiber transmission is impressive, but the final paragraph is the real news. Operations that were formerly done in electrons were done with optical (and off-the-shelf) equipment.

I'm looking forward to what else will be replaced by optical computing (caveat: link to Wikipedia article with lots of "citation needed" sentences)

Plucky Swede glides spaceplane to Earth from edge of stratosphere

Excellent Footage and Narration

It's also interesting to see how quickly the horizon adopts its curvature at high altitude.

Thanks for the link.

Farewell, Reg: This hack is hanging up her Apple jacket

Congrats on the new job

WSJ does some stellar work in the news. Pity the editorial page is run by the insane.

Oh... of course. It'll be like you never changed jobs.

Good luck.

Evernote joins the notably hackable club

Re: Damn it!

Not to mention all the books on my "To Read" list! How will I handle the loss!

Barnes & Noble to sling their Nook - report

Re: The problem with ereaders

EPUB3 would be critical for me, but I read stuff with math formulas in it, so I may not be a typical customer.

Trekkies detect Spock's Vulcan homeworld ORBITING PLUTO

Re: Someone doesn't know their history of astronomy

Beat me to it. Yes, this is another reason why Vulcan isn't a good choice. The book listed in the Wikipedia article, In Search of Planet Vulcan, by Richard Baum and William Sheehan, is very good, particularly in describing the expeditions to observe Vulcan's supposed transits.

Opera joins Google/Apple in-crowd with shift to WebKit and Chromium

Re: Although...

Yeah, never mind. I re-read the article and it's there in paragraph five. Still good to know.

Although...

If Opera starts contributing to WebKit, is it possible that bits of Presto might find it's way into the source tree?

LOHAN teases with quick flash of spaceplane

Re: Aerodynamics

Pardon me while I both up-vote you and boo you at the same time.

Anonymous hacks MIT websites after Aaron Swartz's death

Re: @ Matt Byrant

No, obviously no one is saying that. Nice try moving the goalposts though.

Anonymous turns private eye in Ohio rape case

Re: Here say?

Sorry about the editing.

s/(the case that started the/(the case that started the innocence investigations)/

:wq

Re: Here say?

Prosecutors and judges do occasionally get put on trial, but it's a high bar. The presumption is that they are operating in good faith, and it's hard to prove otherwise. No one involved in the Rolando Cruz debacle (the case that started the suffered any lasting consequences.

And just to make this properly international, this is hardly an exclusively American phenomenon, e.g.:

"It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned."

Lord Denning, 1988

It's JUST possible, but Apple MIGHT not make an iWatch in 2013

Re: Maybe

Perfection is, after all, anything with an apple logo on it.

Well said. I am going to use this every chance I get.

Yes, ironically of course.

8086 and All That. Revisited

This... Is Genius

I particularly liked the "Minnie the Moocher" variant verse.

I eagerly await the Next Thirty Years explained in such engrossing detail. Surely it didn't all end at 1980? I understand there was an impressive commercial released in 1984, for example.

Stroustrup on next-gen C++: I didn't want to let go of my baby

Re: C++ put me off programming

I used Stroustrups book to write a very simple program in 1996, and we still use it today, unmodified.

Okay, that startled me. I'm sure his writing has improved since then, but his first book was a miracle of obfuscation and a love of jargon. I suspect part of that may have stemmed from the fact that he wanted to show all the really cool stuff he'd created (multiple inheritance, for example, was not considered practical in a compiled language before C++; B.S. even said that he implemented it early because he was told he wouldn't be able to do it), but the end result was a book that was useless as a teaching tool and could only be used as a reference on a good day.

It sounds like fifteen years of experience has given him some perspective though. I'll be interested to see what his next book is like.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Re: Time to google myself (again)

There's one image for me that is me.

But I rather like the thought that I am a late landscape painter.

The best e-readers for Christmas

Re: Advice please.

Ah, this turns my usual advice upside-down.

I normally recommend the e-ink devices, but in her case the ability to easily increase font size plus lighting the screen trumps portability and long battery charge. (Yes quibblers, I know one can increase font size on an e-reader, but it's a bit more easy and effective on a tablet.)

Since there are Kindle, Kobo, and Nook apps for Android devices, she's covered there.

Huh, I just checked, and Calibre has an app too, although it uses the books stored on a local wi-fi network.

(I would be pushing Calibre as a dedicated option too -- it's the best e-book program out there -- except you said that the laptop option wasn't really for her.)

Good luck.

E-reader demand slumps, slapped down by slates

Re: No surprise

Hmm, my experience exactly opposite of yours. E-ink is vastly superior to the LCD screen, "modern" or otherwise. Don't dismiss the sunlight (or bright indoor lighting) aspect out-of-hand.

Plus, as has been mentioned before, the device's ability to hold a charge for weeks is a significant plus.

Re: how many do people need ?

Yup, I was going to make the same post until I saw yours.

I like my e-ink device. The fact that I don't need to constantly re-charge is a huge plus. But I bought it a couple of years ago, and the features they're advertising now still haven't spurred me to upgrade. Color e-ink might do it, even if it was a simple four-color palette.

Ten technology FAILS

Re: Palm Pilot never tried to be anything more than a digital diary and contacts list.

Not to mention a limited DBA app for off-site Sybase monitoring. I owned three Palm Pilots all told, and never regretted it.

(There was also a bridge [the card game] and a rogue app, which of course I never used on company time.)

World's LEGGIEST BLONDE is super-rare millipede living in SF

Raising Millipedes

"...body hairs that produce silk..."

Okay, the promised spider silk production hasn't happened yet, maybe we can raise these for their silk production.

I'm expecting a call from a venture capitalist now.

First eyes EVER SEEN (by definition) appeared 700 million years ago

This Study Is Biased

... to the animal kingdom!

Potatoes have eyes. When did they first appear?

Chinese boffins discover bizarro fish-oid creature with FOUR LIMBS

Re: They lie!

"Try telling that to Creationists and they'll burn you as a witch and heretic!"

That is so four centuries ago. Now they'll just talk to you and hand you pamphlets. Incessantly. Makes one long for the burning.

Happy birthday, Compact Disc

Re: Is there any truth

Nah. The closest I came to invoking that rumor was with my first CD player, a Technics SLP-1 (this was in the 1980s), and I found after a couple of years that some of my CDs weren't playing. But they were all Arista CDs (Alan Parsons Project), and they had played before, and I deduced that the Technics was getting old enough that it was missing some encoding that Arista had failed to do correctly.

A new CD player found me able to play all my discs again.

Dice swallows Slashdot, SourceForge, Freecode in $20m deal

Re: Errr...

Yeah. As a member of both Sourceforge and Github, that line struck me as a little odd.

Meanwhile, it'll be interesting to see if Dice allows OpenID-like logging between its sites.

Ten Android games

Re: Some games not mentioned that I have on my Nexus 7

Osmos HD got listed back in February (see <http://www.reghardware.com/2012/02/28/mobile_gaming_week_ten_android_games/>).

I downloaded Osmos HD, Babel Rising, and Refraction thanks to that article. I'll probably be checking out Oscura thanks to this article.

(Meanwhile I'll check out Droidfish. Thanks. Chess and chess-style games are of interest to me, and I've already got a Shogi app and a Laser Chess).

LOHAN to brew thermite for hot ignition action

Re: It's amazing the number of problems that go away when you use Thermite.

Hmm.

Eyes the stubborn stain in the bathtub.

Thermite, eh?

Kepler space telescope peers at hot alien couple

I Applaud Kepler (and Its Boffins), But...

I'm still waiting for a cool planet arrangement that is also habitable. Come on, let's find that Niven-style surface-friendly planet!

El Reg official units of measurement: Linguine, Jubs, Hiltons and all

Re: I DEMAND

Does a subscription to New Boffin include a complementary (and apparently child-friendly) pipe? If so, I'm in for a 3-year subscription.

Ten... pieces of tat for Apple fanboys

Re: Most excellent!

(Movie) Jame Bond would disagree with you about cufflinks in general.

These cufflinks in particular -- I see that they're open source, with the CAD and software files hosted on github.

Just how did you miss that opportunity for ironic commentarding?