Posts by John H Woods
955 posts • joined Wednesday 14th November 2007 11:44 GMT
Posted in How to simulate a light armoured vehicle
Re: Aussie sims.
It's a great story, and has some basis in fact, but the reality of it is apparently a little more mundane. The devs did it as a joke; it was something visible right away (not an embarrassing hiccough during demonstration or after deployment); and it was at an early stage of development (when the projectiles were still, IIRC, beachballs rather than missiles).
@David W
whilst I appreciate the sarcasm in your amusing post I feel compelled to opine thus:
The highly trained individuals to whom you refer would (rightly) have zero respect for us if we took them, or any other highly trained individuals, at their word. This is a logical fallacy called "accepting the argument from authority."
It has been my privilege to meet many top-flight scientists and my feeling is they would be more impressed with even our ill-informed attempts to debunk their approach than the unthinking 'scientists say...' acceptance of the other lay media where their results will be reported.
Re: I can only imagine
Actually I found a porn mag whilst walking the dog the other day. And, sign of the times, it had a DVD taped to the front of it!
Completely agree ...
... you might even hire me (BSc Genetics, PhD Biochem) to do an IT job, given I've been doing one for 20 years. But there's a difference between "not having an IT degree" and "being prepared to lie on one's CV".
Bit like MPs with sleeze. We don't care what shenanigans they get up to in their personal life. But we do care if they are liars.
ABH
*rubs forehead twice*
Re: Is it just me....?
I hope you never have to take a Rorsach test!
Re: How is this all so wrong?
If you did that you could hardly object to my observing your signal strength (oh, that person over there is shouting at this volume). But what if you shouted something I didn't understand (bytes) and I went to the effort of translating it, transcribing it (making it search-able), storing it with something identifying your voice (MAC code), the address you were at, and when it happened. And keeping that information indefinitely. Oh, and then systematically driving round the whole world doing the same, with microphones able to pick up what people were saying 100m away. And then saying I did it unintentionally.
Doesn't it seem just a tiny bit wrong now?
Time is a quality filter
I think there *are* good movies, games and music still being created. It just looks like it was better in the old days because we don't re-show, re-broadcast or re-play the dross: the intervening years act as a filter.
Countless films were made in 1942 - 1358 of them are listed in iMDB. They weren't all as good as Casablanca and most will never be shown again. I still occasionally play Timesplitters 2, but that doesn't mean that I think 2002 was somehow a golden year for videogames in general.
I certainly don't think there should be an expectation that we should enjoy the works of others for free, nor that the works of those others should provide income for generations of their descendants long after their death. But I don't think we can claim that so-called 'piracy' is responsible for the death of all quality when we haven't really established that such a death has occurred.
Let's see
1) Tie the (monetary) success of schools to their grades using league tables etc.
2) Allow the exam boards to compete with each other so that schools can choose exam boards
3) Act all surprised at the consequences
I used to play Skyrim all day...
... but then I took an arrow to the paycheck
Re: On this occasion I am willing to accept the iPhanboi argument that.......
Sorry, but the fact that "people" would not offer to pay more tax, quite apart from the fact that they are effectively taxed much more than corporations - and have a lot less wiggle room in terms of clever accounting - has nothing to do with this argument.
Companies are either paying enough tax or they are not. And, as they have a duty to perform as efficiently as possible whilst remaining within the law, it is the laws which may or may not need to be changed.
Re: About bloody time
Self determination my arse. The reason why it looks that way to us in the UK is that power is massively centralised. What we have in the UK is 'London Determination' and that is why we all fear that the EU merely replaces that with 'Brussels Determination'.
In other EU contries, local government has REAL power which is why they don't fear the EU so much.
Apart from that, I completely agree with you.
ok ...
"I bought an Apple iPad 3 last weekend. I now invite trolls to abuse me below. Lord knows, I deserve it."
Writing bollocks like this gives you that kind of disposable income? Where can I sign up?
ob. xkcd
http://xkcd.com/747/
Re: toasted waffle vending machine
erm - incorrect use of the joke alert icon.
Re: The apple hate makes no sense
- to you. Clearly this is true otherwise you would see that "The products are good" is an irrelevance to this argument. Some people here are objecting on a moral and ethical basis to Apple cynically trying to make people believe they truly invented almost everything to do with these devices when it is a simple matter of fact that they did not.
However, you caricature these objections as 'hate' and consider those who make them to be just "crying about it". Until you can see that the objections have some rational basis (with which you may or may not agree) you will continue to incorrectly perceive a 'hate which makes no sense' and therefore be incapable of contributing to the discussion in any meaningful manner.
The other reason ....
... we like the 2nd hand market and they don't is that , in that market, price reflects quality. They would like to continue to release all games at the same 50-60 price point even though some of them are vastly inferior to others.
Re: when she says
Beat me to it. It means *EVERYONE* else.
Sean T. Baggely says: "Our education system is fundamentally broken. We're doing it wrong. All of it. It'll require politicians with serious, long-term vision and the force of will to carry it through to fix the mess, both in education, and within politics itself."
BZZZT wrong. Politicians *are* the problem. The more they interfere with education, the worse it gets.
Whilst I agree...
... I would like to remind everyone that the UK is a *serious* manufacturing nation. I would like us to do more, and I would certainly welcome more support for UK industry. One of the first things we have to do is stop fetishizing small online start-ups on the one hand, and the financial services industry on the other. The former, as you say, generate very few jobs and the latter is so heavily taxpayer-supported it might as well be considered nationalized industry.
But we have to get out of the "we don't make anything anymore" mindset - it's not helping us support the industry we really do have.
Re: Oh come on!
wor(l)d has moved on - 'boffin' is now mainly a term of possibly grudging, probably jokingly grudging, admiration.
Sources:
1) my teenage children
2) teh interwebs
Posted in Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets
Re: Map update costs
Are you sure you didn't accidentally tick 'avoid main roads?'
Posted in Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets
Re: Hm, odd
... yes, a dedicated GPS can also record blackbox style through the camera and save video when a crash is detected. Oh, no, wait - that's my phone :-)
Get a half decent Android, load SVOX voice of your choice, download one of the black-box apps, and if you wish, pay for traffic news.
The major downside afaics is that capacitive screens don't work with gloves. Nice to see that some manufacturers of dedicated GPS are also going capacitive now to even things up!
Posted in Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets
Re: Please reformat...
Absolutely agree. 'Galleries' of pictures are particularly galling. Firefox + Autopager doesn't do everything but where it works (like here) it is a godsend.
Refreshing ...
... to hear that Linus describes himself as 'no visionary' and is clearly aware of how much of the success of Linux is down to the community.
Contrast with the myth that the entire success of a corporation is down to the almost single-handed efforts of the CEO.
Re: Is it just me?
Facebook firing already happened - you must remember http://itsnotyouitsyourresume.com/wordpress/2009/11/24/5-%E2%80%9Csocial-media-don%E2%80%99ts-%E2%80%9D-for-the-career-minded. Although my sympathy is more with the employer than the employee in that case :-)
Posted in Gmail goes titsup for 30 MILLION PUNTERS
Re: X Sigma
I'm confused - I thought sigma referred to standard deviations from the mean. Is it now also used as a replacement for the '5 nines / 6 nines' etc terminology that we used to use for uptime?
It shows how bad things are ...
... I had to read it twice to make sure it wasn't serious.
Re: 215,000 .xxx domain names
That's a lot of research to do single-handedly.
Re: Reg != Which
Actually, Which? is a bit pointless anyway: they usually only test one of each model as if there was no such thing as production line variation. It's always bugged me that the sample-size-of-one approach can be held up as the acme of consumer testing - I'd rather read 50 online reviews and make up my own mind.
Posted in Ten... Living Room Gadget Treats
Re: So...
Yeah, I'm listening to music playing from my phone through a load of old car radio speakers and an amp and a sub salvaged from a broken x-rocker chair. Still nice to look at stuff you can't have - lots of magazines do this: holidays, cars, yachts, improbably expensive gadgets and even women.
Re: Proving once more
Yes - excepting good encryption of the content
My solution ...
... phone with a 'VIP' mode - and distinctive ring. So i have my non-VIP ring set to silent, and my VIP ring set to normal.
Answering machine message goes like this: "You'll need a PIN to proceed. Don't worry if you don't know it, I'm going to tell you. But before I do, I should also point out that unless you are a colleague, friend or relative of someone who lives here, using the code will be considered an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. If you accept these conditions, please feel free to use the PIN: it is 1990. Otherwise you can leave a message ..."
The phone lights up at least 20 times a day. But no-one has ever dared risk the CMA which handily makes it a crime to access a system for which you are unauthorised, even if you know the password.
Most calls fail at the point that the 'grunt-detector' on the autodialler detects that it has reached an answering machine. Some people hold to leave a message, but where I have put the ellipsis above I have recorded a very long diatribe, lamenting the use of telephone spam. At the end of that message it tells them that the answering machine is currently off. I love seeing some calls lasting the full 3 mins.
Posted in Kogeto Dot 360° video lens
line up tripod ...
... blah blah. Don't be silly - just take tonnes of somewhat overlapping shots. Stuff into a moderately powerful PC running Hugin. Wait. Enjoy.
Re: Uhhh
"The erstwhile Soviets have already been there"
... you're welcome
Absolutely ace ...
... O/T - don't forget to check out 'Storm' by the same genius
Until they brought the case ...
... the costs were zero. The 'costs associated with his crime' to which you refer appear to be costs payable by the UK taxpayer for the ensuing circus.
great blog ...
... thanks for pointing it out
Err...
... just read that wikipedia article and it says "A portmanteau (Listeni/pɔrtˈmæntoʊ/; plural portmanteaux or portmanteaus) or portmanteau word is a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes into one new word". So apparently it could be whole words - although I'm struggling to come up with one. Portmanteau itself is pretty close.
Here's looking forward to ...
.. cases made of other materials. Brick?
learn some stats...
... before opining on sample size. Hint: around 2000 *randomly* chosen voters is sufficient to get +/- 3% polls for *national* elections.
Activation required ...
... Mrs Woods says it's only hard to find because it only becomes active after one's partner has cooked an elaborate meal AND TIDIED THE KITCHEN BACK TO THE STATE IT WAS IN BEFORE.
I can't tell if she's right, because I'm only allowed to look for it when those conditions have been fulfilled.
Sanctity ...
... not the word that comes to mind when we are talking about beating televised confessions out of people and then sentencing them to death on that basis.
Actually...
It's fairly well established that midnight is 24:00:00. In other words, midnight on Dec 31st is the same time as 0:00 on 1st Jan. But because of the potential ambiguity many legal documents like to use 23:59 or 0:01 just to be sure.
Ace....
... makes me wonder if you mounted two together would you have made a Raspberry Tau?
PDF Creator ...
... should get a mention here. It's a free open source product that "looks" like a Windows printer. You print to this printer, fill in the dialog and boom, nice .pdf to do whatever you want with. Can't for the life of me work out why it is not more popular.
