* Posts by Matt Kemp

20 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2007

The Reg surfs for porn with a San Jose councilman

Matt Kemp

Driftnet

Just fire up Driftnet:

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/

and sit and watch. Click to download dodgy stuff for 'evidence'.

Scientists create Chewbotca robot muncher

Matt Kemp

If it chews loudly..

It's getting smashed right now.

Sony to bring GTA IV PS3 bundle to Blighty

Matt Kemp

@Ben Bufton

Unless you really want severely broken backwards compatability, you go for the low end one and then just stick a new hard drive in it:

http://www.slashgear.com/ps3-hard-drive-upgrade-132464.php

As for the console whining, it's not exactly new or clever - it was all much simpler back in the days when people argued over Mario and Sonic instead of polygon output or system architecture. I guess nowadays you don't get knifed because your console has a smaller hard drive or something.

UK Reaper drone wrecked in Afghanistan

Matt Kemp

It could be..

They've saved all the valuable bits from the crashed one, which could just be fitted into a new one?

BBC should not pay for fibre, Ofcom tells MPs

Matt Kemp

@Roger

The fact is, short of singling out every single content provider in the UK and abroad and making them pay their share, that model just isn't viable. Should we go find all the people who get slashdotted and get a sudden rush of activity to their website and force them to pay up?

The main problem seems to be the large ISPs selling unlimited broadband for stupidly low prices. When people actually try and test this theory without reading the small print, they get stung because they weren't actually supposed to be doing that. There's no such thing as a free lunch - if you're promised an unlimited line for £15, you're more than likely going to get an extremely bad contention and get slapped with a fair use the second you go over 5GB.

I would rather see either an increase in prices overall to pay for new fibre, or ISPs changing to a cost-based model per GB used. Also, people need to be told what contention means - some large ISPs are essentially selling lies to people.

Japan: Wii Mario Kart more popular than PSP erotica

Matt Kemp

Re: MarioKart, best game ever

I'd definitely say it's fun, and the Wii wheel attachment works fantastically well - the only thing I'd say is that it is the single most infuriating game I own for it.

The increase to 12 racers and increased number of powerup boxes means that it's mentally hectic - you can drop from first to 12th in one easy jump. I guess that's part of Mario Kart though, and it's great in multiplayer for smacktalk - the only problem is you can't fit the wrist strap on easily, so in single player the temptation to throw that bastard across the room is so hard to resist.

The iPhone learns to read

Matt Kemp

It's funky, but..

Is there a real use for it? I can see the use for chinese, but I can't see the use for english - you'll be using a finger so you'll probably draw each letter quite big for it to be recognised, and from previous use of tablet PCs they're usually quite slow. Once you get used to typing with the iPhone you can usually be quite fast - three finger typing is about as fast as normal typing on a full keyboard. Surely it'll be awful for passwords as well - if you can see what you're typing so can everyone else, but if you can't then how do you know it's doing it right?

Well done to the guys that developed it - I just can't see much of a use for it.

Hacker blasts Mac clone maker's licence 'violation'

Matt Kemp

If I remember correctly..

Apple's EULA says that it can only be used on an Apple-labeled PC - grab one of them labels you got with your ipod and slap it on the side. Job done.

Official: O2 and Carphone Warehouse to slash 8GB iPhone price

Matt Kemp

iPhone usage

It's unlimited access to the EDGE network and The Cloud's wifi spots.

If I remember correctly, the contract also specifies you can't use it for IM or streaming media - You can't legally stream iTunes music store or Youtube over it, and the BBC iPlayer website specifically mentions that 2.5G isn't fast enough for streaming their programs. They're meant for use over wifi - If I remember correctly, americans even have access to technology now which allows them to order from starbucks over their iPhone to save them having to actually communicate with people (ironic, given the medium).

Interesting idea about a 3G iphone in June - I'd be interested to see if apple/O2 will be offering trade-ins on older models, though I doubt it.

World of Warcraft spykit gets encrypted

Matt Kemp
Unhappy

"could" be ravaged by gold farmers?

Bit late on that one.

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

Matt Kemp
Unhappy

New image challenge

Photoshop Websherriff so far up an 'unidentifiable' arse as possible.

Wii wins console war, market watcher claims

Matt Kemp

Next Gen?

The Gamecube was the previous generation, the N64 before that - last I checked, generations were to do with levels within a family rather than tech specs (Even then, it has a higher spec than the gamecube which technically, makes it the next generation of Nintendo console. Taking that into account, they managed to keep full backwards compatibility with the Gamecube, so woo for them)

Running biometric footware

Matt Kemp

RFID Shoes?

Are we going to have to microwave our shoes next to get rid of the RFID chips?

I'm waiting for someone to develop full-body Faraday Cage suits - thin hazmats, but keeping all your data inside.

Chinese firm claims World of Warcraft stole its fonts

Matt Kemp

Drop in the ocean

13.2m is about 11% of Blizzard´s monthly earnings from World of Warcraft alone (Never mind their other games) so, if I were in their position, I´d just give them the money and leave ´em to it.

Why Apple won't sell 10 million iPhones in 2008

Matt Kemp

re: Will you do a mea culpa when Apple passes 10 million before the deadline?

"Can you say paradigm shift?"

Can you say Apple PR Department?

New, New Labour gets new logo and website

Matt Kemp

While everyone else notices connections between red and blue..

...all I can see is John Prescott with either extreme constipation, or trouble holding in a laugh.

Missing the PowerPoint of public speaking

Matt Kemp

Re: "What about subtitles then?"

With subtitles, do you concentrate on the audio being spoken? The idea is you concentrate on the text, since the entire reason for having subtitles is the audio makes no sense.

As for the mix of Powerpoint and speaking: As a student at one of our country's supposedly 'top' universities, I can inform you a surprising amount of lecturers use astoundingly boring lecture slides. One lecturer distributed copies of his slides at the beginning of a lecture, proceeded to read through them and display them all at the same time. Information overload kicks in, and looking around the lecture hall all I could see was bored faces.

In comparison, easily the best lecturers I've had are ones that write down an explanation of what they're trying to impart on a blackboard. Copying what is written not only gives good notes to learn from later, but also the action of writing it down means you concentrate on it more than blankly looking at a screen.

Thai King video wag pulls YouTube clip

Matt Kemp

Re: Thai King video wag pulls YouTube clip'

Personally I think there needs to be an understanding of someone's culture before judgements can be made on their actions.

While censorship is, in general, a bad thing, free speech has much worse consequences when it is abused. Something's offensiveness is subjective - what I don't like is different from you. When it offends an entire country a line has to be drawn, in my opinion.

"Unlike the real world, the internet allows me to ignore whatever I want, including the content I find insulting and inappropriate. Unless the creation of that information harms people (like child pornography, or various types of fraud), I'm not going to make a crusade out of it, no matter how offensive or hurtful it may be to me."

This video has hurt people, as it seems to have offended a country. To me, that vastly outweighs one person's apathy.

Cray starts pimping BlueArc's storage Titan

Matt Kemp

Re: Just what I always wanted!

"Wow, an advanced weapons research lab computer system thats still experimental..."

It's in no way experimental by the looks of it. It's just Cray and BlueArc decided to create a partnership since their products were used together sucessfully.

All it's doing is connecting up a really fast PC to a really big hard drive, anyway.

Don't forget the ‘C’ in Objective-C

Matt Kemp

Re: No, C really is dead

At which point did efficiency become irrelevant?

While some may be extreme cases, why go through the effort and waste of system resources to get the same result? As someone stated above, Objective C is built on top of C - why not use the functions of C if it makes your program just that more efficient?

While this method presented only saves a couple of system calls, if this kind of method was present throughout the code thousands of times, then the difference begins to add up. I don't understand the aversion to doing something that can only save system resources.

The attitude that "I don't have to bother making my code efficient, so I won't" seems to be perpetuating through a lot of projects - which, as someone mentioned, is probably the reason that Vista needs 1GB of memory. When a Java program that requires a 60MB memory footprint which a lower-level language can do with 120KB at most, does it not make sense to use the more efficient version?

Writing good, efficient code not only makes you more versatile as a programmer but also saves your users time in the future - especially for heavy load applications such as games, multimedia players and even supercomputer programs. If you feel code might be obscure or intelligible to other developers, use comments! That's the entire point of having them.