Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson
1875 posts • joined Tuesday 24th April 2007 14:31 GMT
Page:
Posted in Apple's iOS 6 maps STILL muddle Mildura
How many RPM
is Steve Jobs doing in his grave?
There is a Dutch saying, which translates to:
Reputation comes on foot, and leaves on horseback.
Apple always prided itself on high quality, easy to use, well designed products, and this was the image it successfully created in public. Whether the reader agrees is another matter, I pass no judgement as I have limited experience with Apple hardware (the Apple II our school bought, and some Mac(book) Pros at an institute I visited). A few more screw-ups like this and that reputation may start to slip seriously.
Re: not a patent, a trademark
Using a leaf as trademark for Apple makes perfect sense if you remember the original Golgafrinchan settlers of planet earth used leaves as money.
Just a minor point
Any Landeskriminalamt (a state bureau of criminal investigation) is not an equivalent of the FBI, that would be the Bundeskriminalamt (federal bureau of criminal investigation).
</pedantry>
Re: Less likely to kill
I thought the only safe things there were some of the sheep
or was that the place which had very few dangerous snakes because they had all been killed by the spiders?
Re: All together now!
Most likely: no, but it might have played pong by tele-type
Fully automated?
Is the on board system called HAL 9000 by any chance?
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"
I had quite a few interesting experiences when working at the university hospital as scientific programmer for the image processing system we had developed. This was a DOS system with monochrome text monitor, equipped with a frame grabber and an extra colour monitor to show the image from the camera and ant processed image. One day a user came to complain that since my last software update, the mouse was behaving in reverse: move left, the cursor goes right, move up, the cursor goes down, etc. I explained that I had not changed anything in the mouse-handling, but agreed to come and have a look. It turned out she was holding the mouse with the "tail end" facing her. After rotating the rodent 180 degrees I invited her to try again. Rather red-faced, she went to work.
Five minutes later she comes into my office complaining that the image was upside-down (again blaming the software upgrade). Completely baffled at this, I went and had a look. I found everything looked normal (all text readable without putting a crick in your neck). I suggested all looked well. She then said that it was the colour image on the monitor which was upside-down. This image just showed some bacteria, which looked much the same in any orientation. The text on that screen also looked fine. I asked her again what the problem was, and finally it dawned on me. I went to the microscope, rotated the camera (which she had mounted) by 180 degrees, and asked her if this was better. Very red-faced, she went back to work.
I think she would not have dared come to complain about anything that month, even if the system had caught fire.
Re: Really?
The nuclear option is always best
Re: Volume Control ?
EXACTLY!!!!
<-- ONLY SUITABLE ICON!!!!!
An epic saga indeed
Just epic!
I shall follow this continuing saga, forgetting not those who fell in the pursuit of glory.
I do not doubt the playmonaut was taken (by Valkyrie) to a place in the great hall of Valhalla, the only fitting place for a hero of his stature. I shall raise a horn filled to the brim with my best mead this evening, or failing that a tot of finest Usge beatha!
Real BOFH fans will remember the lusers password "maggot"
luser: "But I like the word maggot"
BOFH: "And I like the words 'Grievous bodily harm,' but do not use them as a password..... Yet"
@MacGyver
Moire patterns (properly aliasing artefacts) occur when a semi-periodic pattern below the limit of resolution of the CCD occurs in the image, not in random noise patterns. Thus the signal needs some semi-periodic component to get these artefacts. I have seen hundreds of astronomical images taken below the resolution limit of the optics, and have never yet seen Moire-like aliasing artefacts.
Neat images
Auroras are often magnificent, but this adds a whole new dimension (38 actually, from 3D RGB to 41D hyperspectral)!
I wonder if the airglow wave pattern is in some way similar to ionospheric waves seen by the LOFAR antennae. Those seem to occur at higher altitude, but I wonder if similar mechanisms trigger them (or that there is some coupling between ionospheric waves and the low altitude wave pattern seen here).
Re: Appl$
Should Appl$ not be Appl€
(yeah, wrong currency, but it does look better)
Nice one
Extra points for messing up the legal eagles!
For a moment
I thought they had hacked the FourEcks trading site (operated from Didjabringabeeralong no doubt (or was that Bugarup))
Re: Should be mandatory declared
Good idea. Some appraisal systems I have seen could very efficiently be replaced by throwing darts. You simply take the score modulo 5 and there you are!
Some employees might prefer throwing darts at senior management, however.
Re: Ironic
This might be taken as meaning that you are taking these badges FAR too seriously
OOH! Shiny!
Hear, hear!
The tone of the comments is a good deal more measured than the tone of the article. Go commentards!
But our future scaly lizzard overlords don't need hairspray!
do they now?
Re: Nasties from beyond
"But consider it in reverse: What's the likelihood that we discover something on a moon of Jupiter that turns out to be SIMPLY DELICIOUS?"
I thought they all tasted like chicken.
I bet some of them even taste more like chicken than some "chicken" sold by some elderly colonel here on earth.
Inspiring!!
I must write a grant proposal to search for a complete "space invaders" themed set of moons!!
Posted in At LAST: The BRAIN-CONTROLLED helicopter
Am I the only one?
Seeing the image of this odd-looking helicopter, I immediately got this image of some geek with the thing on his head as a very high-tech propellor-head
And, no I do not want one for my kids!!!
If they were really serious about the pink look, they would have labelled all the pink buttons in pink on a pink background and have a little pink light light up pink to show that you have pressed it.
(makes a changes from black in the Haggunenon battle cruiser)
Posted in Acid oceans DISSOLVING sea life
Re: They'll evolve
If the "earth system" is self healing, might it not want to get rid of us, like an immune system gets rid of pesky little parasites?
Re: 9 years old
"9!
Pooh to the thugs from the Copyright Stazi."
I have never heard someone 9! = 362,880 years old referred to as a kid. A stiff, yes, a fossil, more likely
Please pass me the one with the elementary algebra book in th epocket
Posted in 'Mount Doom' rumbling ominously
Did the warning read:
Cautioussss, my precioussss! Musssstn't risssssk our neckssess, musssst we?
Mine is the one with the three volume edition in the pocket
Can you give the conversion from Swatch to Becquerel?
We need to know
Bureaucracy = Cult of Cowardice
'nuf said
Should get a T-shirt printed
Hands up everyone who wants to over-clock this machine
Posted in Edible iPhone case goes on sale in Japan
Going there shortly. I will ask if there are similar cases for android phones, just for fun
Re: Chimpanzees are not monkeys
Equally importantly, once the button switching a human being into an orangutan has been pressed, they result ape DOES NOT WANT IT TO BE SWITCHED BACK!!
EEEEK!!
as the librarian tends to say when this is suggested (either that or he bounces your head on the cobblestones a few times).
Posted in KDE 'annoys the hell of' Linus Torvalds
Featurism?
wasn't that creature feep?
Mine is the one with the "dyslexic's dictionary" in the pocket
Re: Contempt of court parts 2 and 3
So in addition to the entry
Recursion: see Recursion
we can now add
Apology: see Apology
to the IT dictionary
Re: And I thought Q-Beam's were usefull...
Absolutely. The BOFH for one would love to wave one around in the boardroom.
Where on earth can you still get a spare 500 MB drive?
If you want one like that, maybe you can also use my 8" floppy disk (128 kB storage!!) with CP/M2.0 on it (official copy).
Re: Sir
"Not much of a black hat if he still hasn't taped up his webcam ffs."
Unless he was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask
Or maybe these are stars surrounded by a fleet of black Haggunenon battle cruisers (the ones with the black instrument panels, with black buttons which are labelled in black on a black background, and whenever you press one of them a little black lamp lights up black to show that you have done it), which blot out the light of the star.
Either that or
Dark Matter = Hactar
I must say I am curious, but the ASUS Transformer series still seems to fit my needs a bit better (that and a fast 13 or 14" notebook with good graphics grunt)
Re: Asked in jest
Astronomers use FITS = Flexible Image Tape System. It typically uses 80 byte records called "card images". That alone shows its age.
We are just adapting our code to handle FITS. I would love to put our parallel code through its paces on this image (biggest we have done so far is 3.9 Gpixel).
Of course the whales were making a racket back then!
So would I if there were strange beings with harpoons chasing me
Mine is the one with "Moby Dick" in the pocket
Re: Tedium
Tedium? Well yes, I suppose. "Inserted into a cow's vagina" might well be the result of near terminal boredom (but not on the part of the cow, I presume)
I am somehow torn between to emotions, i.e.:
1. HOW ON EARTH DID IT GET THERE??!!
2. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW how it got there
Posted in Apple unsheathes MacBook 13-incher
Games are not the only reason for wanting graphics clout. Physics simulation and 3D visualisation of medical data (MRI and CT scans) require more grunt. For many people the HD 4000 might be OK, but there are those whose work depends on graphics power.
Posted in Apple unsheathes MacBook 13-incher
Re: The only snag...
"Most people use wifi or do not see an issue leaving a small and relatively cheap adapter on their Ethernet cable."
The problem is not that I mind having an adapter on my ethernet cable at home (though it is a potential problem when someone detaches it to use their native port, the adapter can get lost). My problem is when I want to use ethernet elsewhere (visiting other institutes, e.g.). It is just another thing to pack, no deal breaker, but still a bit of a hassle. If the things had a decent graphics card, I could certainly live with an ethernet dongle.
Re: 'kin huge Mach diamonds...
Should that not be macho diamonds?
Sorry, I'll get me coat
A colleague of mine at first logged all (failed) attempts at getting through his router, but gave up full logging because the log file started to grow alarmingly fast. Generally attempts by script kiddies at that point in time, plus some more concerted efforts to break in (usually eastern Europe or Far East). And yes, neither his nor my home router's settings are the factory defaults, only the bare minimum of ports are open to allow internet access. And then there is still no reason for complacency.
Posted in Apple unsheathes MacBook 13-incher
Re: The only snag...
No nVidia = no CUDA = no use to me. I also MUCH prefer ethernet, as I routinely do need bandwidth. Real pity as this machine ticks a lot of boxes for me. It looks really nice, I love the high resolution, and light weight. My current lightweight (13", 1.69kg) really needs replacement, but I need a machine with nVidia graphics and ethernet. Using a dongle is a pain, in my view.
Posted in Big data to be normal by 2020
Re: GiGo
Agreed, Steve, it is! it is fucking obvious
Somehow the fucking obvious escapes many people
Take politicians. How many projects are out there based on the premise that as long as we collect ALL the data we will be in a better position to find terrorists/paedophiles/other undesirables? Lets take fingerprints from everybody entering the country! Hooray!! We have struck a blow in the war on terror!!!
No, you are just showing the general public that you are doing something, by pissing them off big time every time they enter your country.
When will these guys learn that data is not the same as intelligence?
Mine is the one with the shiny new degree from the UFO (sorry, couldn't miss the chance to hijack that acronym for the University of the Fucking Obvious)
:-)
