* Posts by DavyBoy79

22 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2010

Grand Theft Auto 3 fires towards fondleslabs

DavyBoy79

Downloads

Just bought the game, and the first time it runs, it downloads over 400mb of game data. It appears to have the original soundtrack which is awesome, loved the radio stations!

Google open sources JPEG assassin

DavyBoy79
Thumb Up

Fair point

Didn't know that under the hood JPEG uses YUV. As for embedding ICC profiles... surely because it's a RIFF file, this is something really easy to do, because of what RIFF actually allows you to do in terms of storing lots of random shite in chunks.

DavyBoy79
Stop

At first I was excited

As a photographer, the thought of being able to use a newer format that offers a reduction in file size when delivered to the customer seems great... but... it uses the YUV "colour space" and not a derivative of sRGB (or Adobe RGB). This means two things... conversion from a native format into a format not well suited for still photography, and secondly, storing in a format that favours brightness over colour means that many photos will look poorly coloured, especially where there is a strong contrast between colours, at edges.

So for the casual punter, this will probably be ok, but for the discerning eye, I'll stick to JPG thanks!

Opening UK cyber-security challenge cracked

DavyBoy79

What...

Did I not pass ;-)

DavyBoy79
FAIL

Chuffin sneaky

And that is one reason why I won't be attempting to enter the real contest! :-)

Busted!

DavyBoy79
Boffin

I agree with Anonymous1 (I actually DO know who you are!)

The = at the end of the cipher was a massive giveaway, the fact the opening part of the resulting file had JFIF in it was the clue it was a JPG file, and loaded it up.

It's trivial though if you recognise the clues... no way I'm going to do the real challenge though!

PayPal enables cash-by-slap

DavyBoy79

GPS and Time

Firstly, GPS requires at least 3 signals to be received to allow triangulation, minimum of 4 for it to properly work. But that is for working out the position of the device. You can get a time signal from a single GPS satellite. It will be inaccurate to the order of microseconds because of the delay it has from travelling from the satellite to your handset, but it should be accurate to the millisecond.

I would imagine most outdoor places in busy citys would still be able to get a single signal, but you would not be able to determine it, because the GPS indicator would always be red, as it can't get the remaining 2-3 signals.

Inside, yeah, game over for using GPS time.

Flat-pack plug designer wins top award

DavyBoy79

If I remember the original video

That was one of the proposals they'd had, was a smaller n-gang adaptor, using the folded up design

Muso turfed off train for 'suspicious' set list

DavyBoy79

Have the plastics ever heard of RIPA?

I doubt it, but they could find themselves in hot water!

Blighty surrenders to Street View

DavyBoy79

I'm sorry you feel this way

But, the plain fact of the matter is, most people's houses are now on Street View, and under the UK Photography laws, this is perfectly acceptable. Your child is outside in public, again our Photography laws allow for the photography of any individual who is outside, providing that individual was not in a place that they were expecting privacy (the anti-paparazzi section). If your child is outside in public view, then Google photographing it, is the same as a tourist photographing it.

The law allows for the free publication of these photos as well, providing they are not of an extreme obscene nature, or used in an extreme obscene way (such as peado sites).

Don't hate the player(s) hate the game, but tbh there are a lot of militant photographers out here (I'm not so militant) that fight for our right to free photography in public.

Cryptome: PayPal a 'liar, cheat and a thug'

DavyBoy79
Boffin

Translation services provided

Translate mode on:

"I told a retailer that I spend a lot of money with, that if they decide to use only Google Checkout and Paypal (i.e. drop all other forms of payment mechanism entirely), then I will take my business else-where."

Translate mode off

Beeb deletes iPlayer app from iPhone

DavyBoy79
FAIL

Not trolling

But did you read past the title? It was plainly obvious that this was a tongue in cheek piss take of the trolls lurking around here.

Microsoft slams nails in Windows Vista, XP SP2, 2000

DavyBoy79
Stop

Using a car analogy

It is like saying "3 years ago, we issued a recall because of faulty engines, you chose not to bring your car in, and now we've expired the recall, as it costs too much to support! You had three years to get it looked at, and you refused for whatever reason. You want it fixed now, you have to pay"

Seriously, I am concerned that people expect continuously free support for software that is so outdated that it should be in a museum.

I guess you get the support you pay for!

Supersonic stealth jumpjet makes 'short landing'

DavyBoy79

specifically point 1)

The landing appears to be very long, but try and examine the speed at which the plane lands. From very poor visual estimates, I would estimate this to be around 50kts. If you sail your carrier into wind, you could expect around 20kts+. Thus, the horizontal speed relative to the deck is only going to be around 30kts at max. I would argue then, the brakes and a suitable length short runway would allow this aircraft to land and stop on deck unassisted.

Point 2, now this will be a fun transition for the pilots. I can see the Standard Operating Procedure for a deck landing to be "Aim about 1 ft behind the edge of the carrier, and the bounce will make the wheels touch down just beyond it"

US must redesign killer hot dogs

DavyBoy79
Flame

Grabs a child and tests

"What do you mean your lungs are on fire?" Pft, the youth of today!

DavyBoy79
Thumb Up

Simple idea really

Extrude them through a star shaped extruder. Make them larger so you still get the same amount of meat, but now you have breathing channels running along the length. It would also make a great place for the various sauces and additions to sit on the hot dog without out sliding off!

Putting an iPad through the Motions

DavyBoy79
Thumb Up

Renewed interest in Slate form factor

When Microsoft first came out with the idea for Tablet PC, they expected a huge public response for it, which never really came. Maybe because it's Microsoft, maybe because the cost of the units were prohibitive, maybe maybe maybe... But what is true is that people have mostly forgotten or rejected the idea of Tablet PC's.

Now Apple come along with all their fanbois and launch a Tablet "PC", and there is the hype that was never there when Microsoft sold the idea. So Motion Computing would quite clearly not mind the launch of the iPad, as Apple have spent a lot of money selling the Tablet idea to the masses, that seem to be more receptive this time around. Motion spend very little, and can ride on the back of the wave of the iPad success.

Everyone's a winner it seems!

Dear Google: Just how mammoth is your search share?

DavyBoy79
Boffin

Monopoly doesn't 100% of the market

"In economics, a monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it"

So they don't need 100% of the market, just be big enough that they can control it, and let's face it, Google *DO* control their market!

Regulator sniffs around stonking iPhone game bills

DavyBoy79
Boffin

Very much AdMob's fault

Check the reference document http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference.pdf on page 11 - dated 17th June 2009.

"In a native application, opening a URL with the tel scheme initiates dialing without further prompting from the user."

This is not a recent change, but a documented feature since the middle of 2009!

The blame lies entirely on AdMob, who should have verified the critical changes to the SDK to assess the impact it will have on their product, but instead, appear to have been complacent in a deprecated feature of the iPhone, to display a warning regardless of whether it originates in an app or a web page.

Brit kids failing to fall out of trees

DavyBoy79
Boffin

Beware the sensationalist Statistics!

The sun article mixes numbers with percentages where it wants to. Yes it gives a massive drop of 911 tree falls. Fine!

But how much is the 60% increase in RSI injuries in real terms? It can be as little (with no rounding) as 8 from 5! Which in this case is too small to be of concern.

Come on Sun, spit the REAL figures out and show us how you really doctored the figures!

Netezza slims TwinFin analytics appliance

DavyBoy79
Happy

I think the best way of describing this in simple terms

is to imagine you dumped the entire UK Bank accounts records including all transactions onto a traditional RDBMS server, such as Oracle 11G. Now imagine you wanted to query the entire database for all transactions between £100 and £150. You would require a LOT of tuning to get the database to return Google'esque speeds on a traditional RDBMS. Now imagine you wanted to query the entire database for all accounts opened up within a 20 mile radius of a certain address... again, a massive amount of tuning.

With Netezza, there is no tuning at all (OK, there may be tweaks, but nowhere near the level of the traditional RDBMS's), and you can query any field regardless of whether or not it would have been indexed on a trad-RDBMS, with the speed of results from an index-field only search.

It is like taking a massive database, and asking it to perform with Google-like speeds with no intervention!

You really have to see it to believe it, and it is shocking how good it is!

Entire UK will be on ID database sometime in next 3 millennia

DavyBoy79

We'll never fully register the UK

According to the Mid-2008 figures of Population Growth (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6) the population grew by 408k people in a year, or over 1000 people a day. 50 people signing up a day are massively overwhelmed by the 950+ others!