* Posts by No, I will not fix your computer

708 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

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With Hobbit and LoTR in the can, Trolls no longer welcome in New Zealand

No, I will not fix your computer

What about religions that require you to be intolerant of other religions?

Theist: I think you should be killed for your beliefs

Atheist: You shouldn't say that

Theist: Look, a "get of jail card", I'm just practising my religion

Theist: I think you should be killed for your beliefs

Atheist: I think your beliefs are stupid

Theist: You're being intolerant and I will be reporting you for this

Blocking pirate sites doesn't weaken pirates say Euroboffins

No, I will not fix your computer

Good point, bad example

>>I can invent a cure for cancer and get a maximum of 20 years (usually 10 years after clinical trials etc) earnings but if I write a song about my discovery then I get death plus 70 years which ironically will be longer thanks to my cancer cure discovery.

I would hope that if you invent a cure for cancer that the social responsibility and recognition (plus 20 years of generous income, speakers fees, being written into history etc.) would outweigh the desire to hold cancer sufferers to some kind of financial hostage (i.e. why not be more like Salk and Jenner?).

America was founded on a dislike of taxes, so how did it get the IRS?

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: a country that was founded on a dislike of taxes

>>No, I will not fix your computer, Article VIII. of the Articles of Confederation contained its taxing mechanism.

What do you mean no? I didn't say that the there wasn't taxation, merely that the requirement wasn't there - and 'the new "federal" government had no money', Thomas Jefferson discussed this at length, when you're cap in hand asking for money "please nicely", it doesn't happen,

When I said 'the country is literally "Founded on taxes"', it absolutely is - in fact, I'd go so far as to say the country is literally "Founded on enforced taxation" it was this requirement to submit taxes which meant that a proper government could be run, it certainly wasn't founded on the dislike of taxes unless you have some kind of cognitive dissonance whereby you dislike the very thing which allowed you to exist.

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: a country that was founded on a dislike of taxes

Ever wondered why there's such a huge gap between declaring independence and signing the constitution?

The first constitution (articles of confederation) failed, despite the good intentions because the new "federal" government had no money, it was the second constitution (now called "The Constitution") almost a decade later that required federal taxes, allowed a new "United States" government to be formed, the country is literally "Founded on taxes".

Oxford chaps solve problem in 1982 Sinclair Spectrum manual

No, I will not fix your computer

FAIL?

While it's true there's no fancy techniques being used, that wasn't the spirit of the original problem either, and yes the synchronisation make it somewhat of a mule, it's also important to remember, that there's no such thing as a "stupid publicity stunt" - it's being reported and talked about, so it's a "successful publicity stunt".

That said, lets talk about what could have been done, the Specy *can* do polyphonic (after a fashion), the most well known engine for this is "ZX-7 Polyphonic" so in theory you could do this with two, in which case a crossover serial type sync would be all you need - perhaps you would think that's more of an authentic solution.

However! if there was no Pi, no network, no collection of retro computers, would that have got publicity? would we be talking about it? Perhaps not - but until you do something vaguely interesting - hell! get a couple of Spectrum's and do it like I suggested above, then perhaps you'll have a more valid opinion.

WW2 German Enigma machine auctioned for record-breaking price

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: You're thinking of Lorenz

>>This is a common mistake

It's a common mistake, to think it's a common mistake, what is a "computer"; memory, stored programs etc. was defined by Turning way before we had the technology to do it.

AI has barely moved on from those early papers of Turning, he predicted CISC and RISC before we had words for them, and their applicability for a learning computer, and the type of short-cuts that modern AI takes now to give an appearance of intelligence Turning rejected, the ramifications of which can not be overstated (we quite literally could have been working in the wrong direction with AI).

Jack Copeland does a wonderful, insightful book, which very personal insights from people who knew Turning, clarifications around his death, and the importance of the work from people like Tommy Flowers, how it was all connected.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turing-Information-B-Jack-Copeland/dp/0198719183

Idiot thieves walk free after stolen iPad uploads pics of them with loot

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: The punishment

>>Harsh? Not by a LightYear. Caught red handed, admitted to the crime, & they get off with *Community Service*? Fuck that.

I think the "harsh" comment was what people generally refer to as "humour" (u intended).

Although, to answer your rant, to ensure you have an appropriate response (broad range of punishments available) you need to be able to have warnings all the way up to the maximum punishment that your state/country etc. allows (e.g. life/capital), you seem to want to jump into physical punishment (apparently, you're describing torture) for a crime that didn't include violence, and was evidently committed by very stupid people - should stupidity be punished more than "intelligent" crime like insider dealing?

I think some people confuse punishment and revenge, the real question is which would be most effective in getting the criminal to engage with society correctly?

Fatally flawed RC4 should just die, shout angry securobods

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: RFC 7465 - Prohibiting RC4 Cipher Suites

>>You're breaking the standard if you still offer RC4 in your client, or use RC4 on your server.

It's not a standard (yet) ITEF haven't adopted it as a standard as yet, it's still at proposed status.

>>All sites should achieve at least an A grade with https://www.ssllabs.com, an A+ grade is the goal. If you get less than an A you're doing something wrong.

While it's obviously nice to get an A+ there's many reasons that may prevent you getting an A, for example if your sever only supports TLS1.1 (regardless of whether it is vulnerable to POODLE v2) or if your server cert has an SHA-1 signature (despite PRF has no known vulnerability with SHA-1).

Rather than just getting a "tick in the box" it's better to understand what the impacts of perceived issues are, and what A really means, there's plenty of sites with A that are less secure than those with B, because of the nature of their sign-on, and the fact that there are no practical exploits for some of the issues that end up capping you with a B.

In other words, properly implemented servers that get B ratings can be more secure than badly implemented A rated servers.

Russia considers keeping its own half of the ISS alive after 2024

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: That reminds me, I saw 2001 the other evening

>>Trouble is, without the motivation of making better sticks to hit the other monkeys, we wouldn't have got this far technologically :-/

Partially true, but you have things like the space shuttle, many people think it was a great achievement, and to be fair it was, however, it was a dead end, only ever capable of low earth orbit, specifically designed to have an enclosed bay to move satellites about without showing what you bring back, it was like saying "we no longer want to go past LEO" - and financially commit to nothing more (as it was very expensive), constrained by the military requirements.

However, people like Sergei Korolev were flying rockets in the early 1930's before military involvement.

Of course, the project really took off (pun intended) after the military funding, but imagine if we were not funding war, perhaps that money could be put towards good.

As Tony Benn said, when talking about the founding of the NHS after WW2;

"If you can find money to kill people...you can find money to help people"

I always feel slightly uncomfortable when people say "Look at all the technological breakthroughs that war gave us", as if it's some kind of consolation prize, but I'm really not convinced, surely killing off a load of people (who would be in their prime) and spending vast sums of money to do so, can't possibly be better than using that money to build infrastructure, industry and putting most of them through university?

HAWKING ALERT: Leave planet Earth, find a new home. Stupid humans

No, I will not fix your computer

Evolution

Hawking is wrong, and right for the wrong reasons and I'm surprised he can't see it (being a bit of a cyborg himself).

Humans will "evolve" into AI machines, obviously not evolve in the traditional sense, but we will be their ancestors - again not in the traditional sense (this is of course just the plot of AI where the future intelligence looks back fondly at the humans that have passed, as we look back fondly on our early epitherian ancestors), we humans that have detached ourselves from traditional evolution with all that pesky social care and medicine, which I think is a good thing (and I suspect that Hawking would agree).

So what does that mean for the future? well, us crappy meat sacks need food, water, air, we hate radiation and break randomly, but the AI of the future will be able to travel the galaxy, not bothered (as much) by getting old, only really, really old, they can just be backed up and restored to some newer shiny kit, replicate themselves, drawing resources from the planets, nuclear power that lasts for centuries, solar where available, the occasional asteroid etc. as it travels, shutting down for the odd millennia as it travels between the stars, carrying the knowledge of the world with it.

None of this is new, it's deeply rooted in the Sci-Fi we all know and love, from Star Trek with Voyager, through Independence Day and the Silver Surfer, the ideas are there, not just in Sci-Fi of course, the Von Neumann self replicator has 70 years of history, and perhaps is an argument why we could be unique (or at least the first) in our galaxy to get to this level of development - i.e. why hasn't another life form filled the galaxy with such machines?

What is sure, humans living off this biosphere has some serious problems, not just biodiversity, but basics like growing food and recycling all the products, perfect water harvesting, energy production (we need a lot), and strangely enough, if we solve all these problems, living on earth could be a lot better for those who don't have so much of that.

Eight pocket-pleasing USB 3.0 hard drives

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Not enough power!

Yep, I did the same thing, building a small media server with 4x 2.5" 2Tb drives (smaller and quieter than the 3.5"), but opened the Tosh to find a direct to USB3 board, no SATA - they were only £78 each, but I kept the one I opened and sent the three unopened ones back.

I wonder, ElReg - are the direct to USB3 drives faster than the drives with a USB/SATA bridge? logically you'd think they might be, mine seems whizzy, but I've not done any tests.

Watch out, Samsung! 3 of top 5 smartphone makers are now Chinese

No, I will not fix your computer
Devil

>>.. i was in Botswana in October .. there's a nice Samsung store in Gaborone

Spooky coincidence, I was in Maun in October

>>.. bought my fiance' a Galaxy Grand 2 .. a bit larger than my S3 ..

Took my Chinese dual core 1.3Ghz, dual SIM, 3G (no 3G there for me) £35 new, went with my girlfriend, came back with my fiancée.

>>.. no Apple stores and no iPhones that i could see .. plenty of Nokia though

That's because iPhones are sold through Orange stores.

The iPlay store in the Masa Centre is an official reseller, closest thing to an Apple Store you'll get.

Orion: To Mars, the Moon and beyond... but first, a test flight through Van Allen belt

No, I will not fix your computer
Boffin

Re: Competing with Soyuz...

>>The weight of this component is in the 100's of tons, could be launched in 2..3 parts on existing launchers. This sphere could of course be reused on multiple flights.

100's of tons? so that's at least 200 tons, a minimum of four Falcon launches, but that's to LEO, it costs a lot more fuel to get it past LEO.

To have any Mars mission, you need "Orbital Propellant Depots" and it's a whole new set of challenges, you'll vent a bare minimum of 3% a month (and that's the current theoretical best).

I'm really excited by Mars, but the US approach is very much a political one, employment and the big "Mars" ticket, the Chinese approach doesn't need this, so they are going to the Moon, they will be building bases and staging, perhaps harvesting He-3, I suspect that they will be on Mars while the US is still planning.

Blackpool hotel 'fines' couple £100 for crap TripAdvisor review

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Legal?

Contract law is simple(ish) - an unfair contract is not legal.

Obviously, interpreting it as fair or unfair is a different matter, but taking away or penalising the right to complain seems to contravene basic consumer protection.

Bible THUMP: Good Book beats Darwin to most influential tome title

No, I will not fix your computer

It's "Most valuable to civilisation"

Not, "most impact".

On the origin is probably more valuable than any religious text (Bible, Qur'an etc.) purely because it's neither directive nor prescriptive - it documents a process whereby it demonstrates how closely related we are to each other (and higher apes, other animals).

Religious texts separate people, sexes, ideas, create the concept of thought crimes, hell, vicarious redemption where you don't need to apologise to the victim, just the judge.

While we obviously wouldn't want to model civilisation on Darwinian evolution any more than reading Animal Farm means you agree that it what should also happen.

Bloke, 26, accused of running drug souk Silk Road 2.0 cuffed by Feds

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Mmm...

>>Lemme tell you what the problem with that is.

No, lemme tell you what the problem with you is.

Drugs are great, I mean, really, really good, they can make you feel amazing, this is why lots of people do them, and the difference between getting smack at a grimy den with vaguely clean needles and doing a few of lines of coke in the club is about £150 - it's not a drugs problem, it's a demographics problem, if all you have in your life that makes you feel good is drugs, that's all you'll do.

When smack is cheaper than beer society has a problem - and it's not caused by the drugs, they are just a symptom, attempting to regulate a symptom will never work.

Personally I don't do (illegal) drugs, but that's because I'm busy doing other stuff, I do occasionally get fucked up on beer but only when I can have a bit of a lie in the next day, on the occasions when I drop off a sandwich and a couple of quid to a homeless person do I wonder if the money will go towards some kind of pharmaceutical recreation because they have nothing better to do, yea maybe, but I wouldn't want to deny them their only pleasure.

Bored hackers flick Shellshock button to OFF as payloads shrink

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: OK, I can't follow this one.

I suspect it's just because there's very little pay off, even on vulnerable systems, the potentially most vulnerable say a website cgi would need to be running bash, and it's not a very common thing these days, if there's cgi it's more likely to be a language designed for cgi.

And of course, the more obscure (e.g. F5 admin interface) the less likely that it will be visible to all on the 'net.

The down side is that the big systems (like RHEL) will be patched up quickly and everybody will stop panicking, and the more obscure systems will be left unpatched and become part of more complex multi-stage attacks (e.g. packet fragmentation vulnerability through a firewall, subsequently attacking a router admin interface via shellshock which creates echo ports etc.).

TEEN RAMPAGE: Kids in iPhone 6 'Will it bend' YouTube 'prank'

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: >> Thin, mostly plastic objects are snappy.

>>They were no more shatter proof than the cheap chinese rulers you'd get at Poundland

Actually, I think they were better than the cheap ones, but putting "Shatterproof" meant every kid smashing them as hard as they could against things, it took about a year, but they changed the word to "Shatter Resistant" (same font) - true story.

eBay promises to refund seller fees after latest MASSIVE OUTAGE

No, I will not fix your computer

I tried to log in and bid on a couple of Macs, and a screen (last minute snipe) couldn't get in, eventually when I did, the auction was already finished and someone won a 23" Mac screen, a dual quad xeon Mac and an old powermac for £24 someone got a bargain.

Phones 4u slips into administration after EE cuts ties with Brit mobe retailer

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: A year left to run on the EE contract?

In retrospect, it's not a surprise, O2 left first, being the smallest supplier of contracts to P4U, basically losing out in most contract comparisons, that left EE and Vodafone, directly competing against each other , both having to effectively discount their contracts with P4U skimming the commission, if they wanted P4U to sell a contract then they would have to undercut the other, EE was pricing Vodafone out so Vodafone left, with EE no longer competing with anyone they had no reason to stay.

Vodafone said "Phones 4U was offered repeated opportunities to propose competitive distribution terms to enable us to conclude a new agreement, but was unable to do so." I assume that the discounts that Vodafone was asked to give (which contributed towards the £100M profit) was too much for them?

Carphone Warehouse I suspect now will be in the same state, with the phone (contract) suppliers being in a strong position to offer only smaller discounts, if they don't agree then they will pull out, while they might hoover up some shops and staff from P4U, there's absolutely nothing stopping EE/O2/Voda pulling out - and if they did it with P4U, there will have to be a good reason for not doing it with CW.

Scottish independence: Will it really TEAR the HEART from IT firms?

No, I will not fix your computer

My opinion

When there's blood on the streets, buy property.

The turmoil in the markets means that there's a bunch of people already making money, when stocks go down, you'll find those that reversed bet the stocks rubbing their hands.

A "yes" vote will create even more turmoil and uncertainty, regardless of any positive or negative outcome there will be the same bunch of people making a lot of money, a "no" vote will be more stable perhaps - and so some who don't care about devolution for the people will still be hoping for it.

There will be winners and losers here, but I bet a penny to a pound, some people will gain a lot - and it wont necessarily be the average person in the street.

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: What's in a name?

>>"Britain" is a corruption of the Norman French "Bretagne"

Before the old French (Bretaigne I think you mean) there was the Latin "Britannia or Brittania" being earlier, it's probable the Latin influenced the old French.

>>Ireland's never been described as any sort of Britain

Ptolemy wrote about "little Britain" in Almagest

Aristotle wrote about "British Isles" consisting of two islands "Albion" and "Ierne"

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: What's in a name?

>>The 'United Kindom [sic] of Great Britain' reflected the Union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1707.

<erroneous pedant correction mode>

No, "The Kingdom of Great Britain" was created with union of the Kingdoms of England (what is now England and Wales) with Scotland in 1707 the "United" was added when we joined with Ireland in 1801 when it became "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", then subsequently (in 1922) Southern Ireland "left" and we were renamed to "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"

"Great Britain" is the old term for the large contiguous island, Ireland being the previous "little Britain" (and you thought is was just a show?) "Kingdom" is appropriate because of all the associated islands (not just "Great Britain").

In summary "Union" bit relates to joining with Ireland, not Scotland - it was retained to reflect the Union with Northern Ireland;

i.e. to use brackets;

"The United Kingdom of (Great Britain and Northern Ireland)" not

"The (United Kingdom of Great Britain) and Northern Ireland"

</erroneous pedant correction mode>

While I'm at it, your pendant mark-up is logically inconsistent ;)

NASA clears zero-G 3D printer for mission to SPAAAAACE

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: 3D printing of plastic is not going to save anyone

>>but we prototyped a float-valve on a 3-D printer. It worked for a whole day before falling apart.

ABS or PLA?

We are starting to print with carbon fibre epoxy now, amazing strength and very resilient, in fact zero G could mean printing with materials that gravity otherwise buggers up - zero G isn't a problem, it's an opportunity :D

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: microwave oven–sized??

It's the microwave oven sized thing in the front, not the massive clean box in the background.

Is there life on Mars? Cloud-gazing Curiosity accused of lacking scientific focus

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Robots

Less than half the missions to Mars have been successful, the ISS needs 18 hours a day maintenance to keep it up, you might want transporters, replicators, tractor beams and doors that go shwoop shwoop when they open but unless we prove launch, landing, habitation we won't be sending people to Mars, we'll be sending corpses to Mars.

It's been over 40 years since any human has been any further than low-earth orbit, that was for 12 days, do you think that an 18 month round trip including landing on a planet with barely any atmosphere and taking down enough fuel to escape it's gravitational pull anything but science fiction at the moment?

China have the good idea of going back to the Moon, maybe even a moonbase in the next decade (or two) they will be shipping habitation pods and fuel there, once it's proven for the Moon, Mars will become a rational next step (or maybe Europa).

Windows 7 settles as Windows XP use finally starts to slip … a bit

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Why is Win 8 and Win 8.1 seperated?

The difference between 8 and 8.1 is more semantic or at least cosmetic, the boot to desktop (unless you have touch) makes it feel different from the switch on, start button, new apps etc.

But the same thing is true for Vista SP2 and Windows 7, Win 7 is basically Vista SP3, same code base (Vista is 6.0 Win 7 is 6.1), 7 just had some apps updated (IE), some of the admin pages moved (drivers) and some bits added for touch.

It makes sense to separate 8.0 and 8.1 if it makes sense to separate Vista and 7

What do you mean, I have to POST a PHYSICAL CHEQUE to get my gun licence?

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Why have a license at all?

>>it went from a country where the police were known for not carrying guns to a country where more and more of its police carry weapons.

Actually, less police carry weapons now than before, back in the 80's firearms authorisation was reduced, from a peak of around 17% of police carrying weapons (London) this has reduced to less than 10%, in fact only 7% are trained, and not all of them carry weapons all the time - this is the Met Police, the largest police force in the world, other British police forces have significantly less (NI excluded obviously).

>>At some point England became afraid of its citizens.

Guy Fawkes is one of our heroes, we know how to keep our government in line, do you?

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: If you stop ranting...

>>better vetting of those who wish to have gun licenses and bring an improvement to the overall security of gun ownership

Perhaps you could suggest addressing problems that actually exist? Gun crime from licensed owners in the UK is so rare that when it does happen it's front page news, I think the large background checks, 1 to 1 interviews of family members, access to medical notes, gun safe inspections, credit checks etc. are pretty comprehensive, that, coupled with a requirement of "because I want a gun" being insufficient justification.

Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy

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Re: Logic fail

>>As i understand it, he _can't_ be given a custodial sentence for his alleged crime. _He has already voluntarily locked his silly Ass(tm) up for two years for an offence for which he couldn't be locked up_. Yes, he's really that scared of the Feds.

I'm pretty sure that you _can_ be locked up for rape in Sweden.

My view is simple, he should face the interview and (potential) charges in Sweden, the alleged victims deserve that much.

The whole extradition thing is a separate issue, I suspect that the US (and if the alleged leaked "pending" extradition is true), then perhaps Assange will have an opportunity to validate the actions of people like Maning and Snowdon, imagine the outcry against the US if there is some conspiracy, imagine the US trying to cover it up, FOI would reveal all kinds of wrong doing.

I guess what I'm saying is that if the US government is playing a game, Assange should have the courage of his convictions and play it, if they are not, then perhaps he should turn himself in anyway.

Easy for me to say? absolutely! but then I've never asked anyone to take all the risk and act against their government (even if it's for the greater good).

London cops cuff 20-year-old man for unblocking blocked websites

No, I will not fix your computer

My guess....

I suspect he was actually providing a proxy service, providing access to copywrite material is significantly different to merely using a proxy.

This is why Google don't provide links to (some) torrents, but it's still in the fine line between holding material you didn't pay for and giving access to the same said material, with a vaguely competent lawyer he should be fine, for a start they would have to prove loss or damage, you can't be guilty of speeding merely by having a car capable of speeding.

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: even if he did...

>>On the other hand, in the UK your rights are not specifically codified anywhere, so if bad actors want to pretend those rights don't exist there's nothing for you to point to to say they do in fact exist.

hahahahahahaha!!!!

The US constitution is built upon British documents, Magna Carta for a start, and it's no coincidence that the first ten amendments are called the "Bill of Rights", they are called that because they are based on the British "Bill of Rights" from the 1600's, you're just a bunch of copycats from an upstart British colony.

Besides, how valid is your constitution when you have sedation acts which means the government can do whatever they like to you if you act against them?

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: even if he did...

>>In principle, maybe. However, the USA has a written constitution. The UK has nothing to protect against governments making it up as they go along(*), and the hereditary principle in no way improves that situation.

Ummm... the UK has a massive constitution, from Magna Carta onwards, it's extremely developed, mature and enshrined for centuries, Bill of Rights, Claim of Rights, all the numerous provisions, statutes and acts, which by the way the US constitution (or "Constitution for Dummies" as it's known as) is based upon.

Stick a 4K in them: Super high-res TVs are DONE

No, I will not fix your computer
Boffin

Re: aware of the benefits of 4K

>>Just because you can't see the individual pixels doesn't mean they have no benefit. If you are too far away to see an individual pixel on a screen or dot in a print, you end up perceiving the average result of those pixels/dots. A higher resolution results in an average that is more accurate to the original source.

Yes, and no, the interpolation/antialias effect you're describing is very real, however, for this implied averaging to be relevant you must be able to achieve an effect not possible on their own, as pixel size itself is no longer relevant (as discussed above) then it's only colour and intensity, with a 24bit (True Colour) palate it's about 16 million colours, given normal humans can "only" identify approximately 10 million colours it's actually irrelevant if the screen is more accurate - normal humans can't tell the difference between 24bit (true colour) and anything higher (i.e. deep colour).

I say "normal humans" because people (women and other people with two X chromosomes) who have an extra cone (tetrachromia) can see more colours (yellow-orange as I recall), but that's quite rare, and given that it's an extra cone (not just better fidelity) it wouldn't be an even colourspace so interpolating for a tetrachromat wouldn't be the same i.e. the normal 24 bit (8x8x8) couldn't simply be boosted to 27bit (9x9x9) as you're simply boosting fidelity on the traditional cones, you'd actually need to add a channel for the extra cone (8x8x8x8), which means you'd need to film in four colours and have that extra channel on the pixel.

So, yes, absolutely - an increase in pixels to make up for for low bit depth can be useful, but not really relevant for 24bit displays.

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: aware of the benefits of 4K

@Badvok

>>Ah, yes the old, "can't see the pixels argument"

Hmmm... maybe I should have explained more simply, let me summarise, then feel free to go back and re-read the technical bits;

As soon as you can't make out the individual pixels, any further increase in resolution has no benefit;

For 20/20 vision (good vision) looking at a 1080p/2K screen at any distance over 2x the height of the screen you can't identify individual pixels, so if you're any further away from the screen than twice the height of the screen it is physically impossible to tell if it's a 2k or 4k screen.

So, for a PC monitor where the distances are closer, a 4K screen might be practical, for a home TV, unless you're really close, or it's really big, 4K could be pointless, note - Sony (who produce a lot of digital cinema equipment) have done several studies on this in relation to digital cinema, but the principles are the same (and with very big screens viewed at significant distances it's a little easier to understand).

@El Reg - why not do an article on this? with pictures and everything? 4k is a bit Emperors new clothes for home video (bragging rights aside).

No, I will not fix your computer
Boffin

Re: aware of the benefits of 4K

@Badvok

You're almost definitely wrong, and let me explain why, as this is simple physics/biology.

What is normal range? lets say "good vision" is 20/20 (some people have better, say 20/10), but lets run with "good" - 20/20 vision is a visual acuity of about 60 pixels per degree of vision this means that at a distance of 1.5x the height your total view is 37 degrees, on a 2k (1080p) screen that's 30 pixels - ie. even below average eyesight can see the pixels, on a 4k screen that's 45 pixels per degree and unless you have "good" (above average) eyesight you probably won't be able to pick out the pixels.

So..... if you look at a 1080p (2k) screen from a distance of twice the height you end up with about 60 pixels per degree, in other words 20/20 vision cannot pick out the pixels. for a 4k screen that's 90 pixels per degree - even 20/10 vision would in reality struggle to identify a difference as it's on the limit for 20/10 vision (the best vision ever measured is around 20/8).

60 pixels per degree is a theoretical maximum for 20/20 vision, more correctly that is if each pixel is a contrast i.e. could you identify a line of one pixel; but films don't consist of one pixel lines, it's more likely to be "moving pictures", so the ability it identify a static pixel doesn't really mean much in practicality.

Both physics and I agree that you're wrong, either that or you have the vision of a hawk (20/2).

Google pulls Gaza games from Play store

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Religion... and the rest

>>People will ALWAYS find an excuse to kill each other, whether it is religion, politics, culture, tribalism, football etc. etc.

>>Take one away and something else will fill the void.

While that might be true on some level, wouldn't it be nice not not to have this appeal to authority, or this division of people, for example if you couldn't say "God gave us this land, simply believing in this flavour of God means this is mine" or "My god is better than your god".

Could something fill the excuse void as well as gods do?

Home-grown Xiaomi crushes Samsung in world's biggest market

No, I will not fix your computer

Re: Stop deluding yourself with silly propaganda

>>They (being general) will do just as they are told no matter how stupid the requirement is. They won't question the clear stupidity of their superiors simply because their society does not work that way

While this is true to a great extent (from personal experience) - this cultural difference doesn't change the fact that there's lots of smart independent thinkers, put it another way, there's more elite graduates (passing with firsts, plus multiple degrees etc.) every year in India than there are graduates (of any type) in the US.

This is just a numbers game, its a big country, you're more likely to meet the average Indian graduate than an elite one, but often the elite graduates aren't staying in low-level engineering jobs long, and many do stay in India where its lucrative for an above average achiever.

Brit amateur payload set to complete full circle around PLANET EARTH

No, I will not fix your computer

Ahhh... the old "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" misunderstanding, just in the sky instead of under the water.

Cave pits, ideal for human bases, FOUND ON MOON

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Has nobody seen Pitch Black?

I ain't going in there.......

Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then

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@I ain't Spartacus

>>I want to play it again. I'm amazed no-one's released it for iOS / Android, or just as a Flash game online.

One word.... MAME

Drone's drug airdrop mission ends in failure for Irish prisoners

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Re: Define "drone"

Drone is rather a generic term (but quite accurate in it's use as a generic term), if you're looking for something more specific there's two (overlapping) categories;

UAV - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (the umbrella drone term)

RPV - Remotely Piloted Aircraft (closer to the control you mean)

But of course neither of these terms are fully satisfactory in answering your question, because within these there's;

MITL - Man in the loop (piloting)

MOTL - Man on the loop (destination waypoint with viewing, simple drop, return to base functions)

FA - Fully Automated (considered as issue orders and return, but may include abort functionality)

But these terms could be a bit fuzzy depending on the system in place, and even cover multiple definitions, it sounds like in this case it was a MITL/RPV drone.

Russians turn Raspberry Pi into fully-fledged autopilot

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This looks cool

At the moment I have a Pi with GPS/magnetometer/Sonar so it knows where it is, and I'm getting a servo board which will feed into my dedicated flight controller (KK), but a single board that does all this will be cool.

If this board is going to be an all-in-one solution (flight control and location/direction) it will be great, but depends on how much work the Pi is going to do (and how much IO is still available), I hope the board is going to do all the flight control (specifically stabilisation, level, altitude hold etc.) and leave all the CPU to do the actual navigation, operate a camera etc. (and with Rx input it should be fantastically controllable for manual override).

Price is going to be the biggie, a KK flight controller is £20, servo board £20, GPS £25, magnetometer £2, sonar £2 so $145 for an integrated bit of kit is good, not bite your hand off good, but probably the best bit of "all-in-one" for the price.

You'll never believe it: Apple stock is going for CHEAP

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Re: I see this as a baaaaaad sign.

There's good and bad in this, and I suspect it's more psychological than practical.

Cheaper buy-in you might not want to spend $700 on one share but $350 for 5 feels better, % fluctuations don't appear as bad; a $70 drop on a $700 share is bad, but a $7 drop on a $70 share feels better (even if it means the same).

You know what today's movies need? More drones

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Re: I don't understand this

Before, the early ones were expensive bits of kit costing several thousand, but over the last years they have dropped substantially, my DIY quad with GoPro was less than £500 all in and is much better than those first quads, now you can pick up a quad with camera for barely £45 (my cheapest quad was less than £20 and massive fun).

It's like cars, when only a few had them, licences were not considered, once available to the masses it was deemed required.

ET hunter: We will find SPACE ALIENS in 20 years

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Re: I've heard that before...

@GrumpyMiddleAgedGuy

Totally agree with everything you said, except "We are alone. Any civilisation even slightly more advanced than us could populate the galaxy in 10,000,000 years" even the slowest SciFi fuelled craft requires close to light speeds to get anywhere.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

- Douglas Adams

So imagine there is another civilisation, imagine it exists in a similar time-frame to us, imagine it built spacecraft several factors faster than anything we have ever created, imagine it even happened to point it at our solar system, imagine the craft survived decades of space travel, would we even know? with 100,000,000,000 galaxies each with 100,000,000,000 stars I wouldn't be surprised if some could have life, and further not surprised if some actually could/had/will have life, some of that life could even be massively intelligent, and having a whale of a time in it's own bit of the universe, hell, I get lost in Tescos (and have a particular problem finding the Bovril), just because we may never find it, doesn't mean we are alone.

Recommendations for NAS-based home media set-up

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My setup...

My circumstances are different to yours so, whether is is a recommendation or not is debatable.

Second hand 2U Case - £20 + £15 delivery

(Came with six 3.5" SATA bays, a pair of dual core 280 Opterons, 2Gb RAM, GigE)

16Gb RAM £25 (delivered)

RAID card £20

2Gb flash card and IDE adaptor (has this already but <£10)

6x 2Tb drives (the expensive bit!) - always buy NAS disks new £330

Total <£450

Using NAS4Free and ZFS/Raid-Z gives me ~10Tb of protected storage, I'm not using the hardware RAID from the card because it doesn't support such large volumes, and if fact 2Tb is the largest drive it supports. I could lie and tell you it was simple to put together, but I had a real mare with the advanced format drives (they were quite new at the time, I suspect that NAS4Free has better awareness of them now).

Then for the media centres, I use Sumvision MKV (simple SMB browsing), which works fine, plays on iPad (using VLC), and various PC's, I use a powerline adaptor for the projector in the shed when I do "drive in movie BBq" nights.

Australia to build 35,000-core supercomputer on Xeon-E5-2600 v3

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The clue is in the article

>>Come on - what about telling us about the sort of work loads this beast will deal with.

"Magnus spends most of its time on radio astronomy and geoscience problems"

The amazing .uk domain: Less .co and loads more whalesong

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.uk vs .gb

@Steve Graham

Do you mean Northern Ireland? I don't believe it has a TLD, so if there was a .gb then I assume a TLD would have to be created for it, .uk makes sense so at leats it has an address, unless of course you use .ie, which kind of makes sense unless you start talking about offices in NI which relate to the UK, like the Northern Ireland office , which sits under a .gov.uk, where .gov.gb wouldn't make sense (apart from the physical inconsistency, where's the governmental responsibility implied?).

So, given a choice between .gb and .uk, .uk makes more sense, that said, no reason why there couldn't have been a .gb and a new .te TLD

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