Posts by ArmanX

Re: "burglarized"

Now, if only they could find the burglarizationist who did this! Not, of course, to be confused with a burglarizationoligist, who is someone who studies burglarizations. And of course, a burglarizationectomy may be required, to remove the buglarization. Unless you wanted to get rid of the burglarizationoligist, in which case you'll need a burglarizationoligistectomy. If you only wanted to speak the language of buglarizations, you'd need to speak with a burglarizationolinguist.

Burglarization... burgl... buglari... No, see, now it doesn't even sound like a real word.

Re: Xperia V?

I'm waiting for a truly waterproof camera - completely sealed. No jacks, no ports, no battery cover, just one solid piece. It charges wirelessly, and should come with a waterproof stereo bluetooth headset. Possibly with some sort of magnetic stylus so it can be used underwater, but that's just wishful thinking. The tech exists, but I think I'm going to be waiting a long time...

That's my fear...

I was born at the beginning of the 80s, and I grew up with Legos. Pirates, Castle, Space... the focus was less on the minifigs, and more on the bricks themselves. The minifigs used to be carbon copies; get a dozen Imperials from the Pirates theme, and you'd probably only have two or three different characters. The Blacktron minifigs from the Space theme were almost completely identical. And regardless, everyone was smiling; from the iconic Lego head to the mustachioed pirates, everyone was wearing a smile, whether they were sunbathing in a hammock, shooting the enemy, or being eaten by a shark. Even the glow-in-the-dark ghosts smiled. And that was fine; my imagination filled in the expressions.

These days, though, even the City folk have grins or grimaces. The focus has shifted from building sets to 'adventure sets' - copies of movies, or comic books, or card games. When I played Pirates, I didn't play Pirates of the Caribbean. When there was a Space war, it wasn't in the Star Wars universe. When I built a castle, it wasn't Hogwarts. I didn't copy; I created.

The same applies to gender bias; girls don't need pastels. When I played Legos with girls, they helped build the castle, and the queen ran its creation; when we played Pirates, there was a ship captained by Cutlass Sue. The girls didn't complain about the minifigs not having hair to braid; instead, they took over roles that women held anyway - doctors and nurses, soldiers and sailors, leaders and followers. Frankly, girls that would buy pink-and-pastels Legos will probably buy the latest fashion doll first, so I wouldn't put a lot of effort into making sets for them. Lego shouldn't worry about making sets for boys and sets for girls... it should worry about making sets that grab the imagination. Not copies of movies or comic books or card games, but their own creations. And if they want to copy something, try to classic books; I wouldn't mind a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Lego set, or War of the Worlds, or even Tarzan...

Re: Bit disappointing, really...

There was so much room for double entrendre, and yet the best we got was "creepy-crawlies"... I think he's losing his touch! Science is nice and all, but science without a rant or a combination of winking and nudging is just not good entertainment.

Re: One Day

Oh sure... and the next line will read: "April Fools!"

Sensational wins over interesting any day. Who cares if you (read | listen to | watch) the news, as long as you've (bought | tuned to | changed to) their (paper | station | channel) long enough for them to make some money.

I'm wondering how much this will change things...

Searching for "pirate bay" will probably still return that site in the first ten results. And more to the point, there are so few "legitimate" websites that use the word "torrent" along with popular movie titles that any reduction in score will have no result. Regardless of how the results are pushed down in ranking, you'll find what you were searching for. The point isn't brand loyalty if all you're doing is downloading the latest season of [insert popular TV show here], so one torrent site is as good as the next - and most of them point to each other anyway.

Re: Does anyone have the ...

Not too difficult; bag of flour on a string over a door, and a candle underneath; yank the string a few times, and wait for the earth-shattering kaboom! Note: the door will not fare well, and your mother will probably beat the living tar out of you for blowing up half the garage. Assuming you're not bleeding out of a dozen punctures... and maybe even then.

Re: Well its Nook for me.

I wondered about that... if I'm getting a tablet for reading, I'd much rather have e-ink than otherwise. Though to be fair, my "perfect device" would have e-ink on one side, and a screen on the other; one for low-power tasks, like reading books or checking email, and the other for games, Internet browsing, and the like. And all the size of a largish smartphone. It'll never happen, though... no on would buy it.

Re: Wish they sold them in lots...

Kidding? Hardly; a 1GB SD card handles the average DVD movie perfectly, and an SD card stores much more easily than a DVD. For one thing, I can put it in my pocket. As for marking them, an SD card (and I mean SD, not microSD) is plenty big enough to write a title on.

My point was not that it was a perfect solution, however - just that if I could buy cards in bulk, I would do so, and use them to store my DVD collection. I could also see some use for storing games on them; a 2GB drive could store two or three .iso files just fine. Somewhere there should be an option to buy, in moderate bulk, small or otherwise useless SD cards...

@Aaron Em

Actually... that's the whole problem, right there. When you board a flight, the TSA don't have to be nice to you, or even follow the law; the worst that can happen to them is that you lodge a complaint from a remote city, while the worst that can happen to you is that you are humiliated, fined, and forced to surrender your ticket, with no chance of a refund.

When given the choice between being stranded in an unknown city with no money, no clothes, no plane ticket, and possibly no identification, and having someone strip search you... most people will opt for the latter. I know I did. If I had time on my side, I would have opted for the pat-down, but at that point I didn't want to be stranded outside the US with no luggage or money, and my plane was about to depart.

And it's not like people will stage protests - with a plane ticket costing hundreds of dollars, and the guarantee that they will throw you out of the building, that's a lot to invest.

Re: I remember a time...

>Wonder if anyone would be interested in software to create RAID-6 sets of DVDs?

CDs and DVDs are the line that I have yet to cross... I created a RAID 1 from four floppy drives once, though; talk about speedy! I forget the actual data transfer, but it was around 3.5 times what a normal floppy drive could do. I've done a software RAID 10 on about six flash drives, too, but the overhead was enough to offset most of the gain.

Re: Rubbish

>In what way is a Pi better than that?

Well, it runs on 700mA - a cheap phone charger is fine. So, it's great for projects - a web-based garage door opener, and the like.

It's also great for schools; $50 gets you a computer for a kid to learn to program on. If they ruin the OS, so what? Just flash 'em another and move on.

It's even good for businesses - cost savings over a full computer, plus cost savings on energy use, plus time savings, since all you need to do to upgrade is just plug in a new SD card. Obviously it won't replace most desktops, but there are a lot of assembly line processes that this could help.

If you don't need a cheap, low-powered, custom computer, that's perfectly fine. Not everyone does. But there are quite a few people who do want one - enough, I think, enough to drives sales for a very, very long time.

Re: I'd like them to stop region control

You know what would be awesome? If all those "Sorry, you can't buy that right now" messages were recorded and sent to the record labels. "When this came out, we had 20,000 requests that we turned down, because they weren't from the US."

But you know what? Sony et al would probably just use that information to "crack down on pirates" because when the music did become available, those people didn't all buy it, so they must have pirated it.

Re: Karma police are out

To be fair, yossarianuk said "troll like," as opposed to "patent troll." Troll by itself is a much larger category, and usually means "unsavory" (in some form or another).

Re: Apple have a point

I can never stand the fancy names people give products... give me a flat-out version number any day. Hardy? Squeeze? Ice Cream Sandwich? I'll take v8.04 or v4.0, thanks.

Re: I'm a bit confused...

@John McCallum - yes, but the left hemisphere is usually in the left half of your head. Thus "left" hemisphere. And it controls the right half of the body, you're right - but the article says the boy will have problems with the left side of his body, instead. It sounds as if the article swapped 'right' and 'left' for the brain bit, but not the rest of the description.

@anon and wowfood - it doesn't make a lot of sense that it would enter above the right eye and miss the right hemisphere... I suppose it's possible, but not at such an angle as the spear pokes out the back.

Re: "Chip level" is not an answer

If it's the same chip as they had years ago, it's basically a lock-down chip; enter the wrong password for the BIOS too many times, and it literally breaks the laptop... and you can't un-break it without sending it in, along with a wad of cash and proof of ownership. "Expensive" versions of the chip include remote wipe/remote lock, built-in GPS tracking, phone-home capabilities - all from BIOS-level. Even if a thief pulled the hard drive, you could still remote-lock it if it was plugged in to a network. It's actually fairly impressive; overkill for a personal laptop, probably, but impressive nonetheless.

Re: not really the same thing

As far as the bootloader, I hear the reason for its design is that it's pretty much impossible to brick, now; everything runs off flash, so if you screw something up, you can just pull out the card, format and reinstall, and away you go again. Anything more complicated adds the possibility of error, and it would really, really suck to brick your RPi after waiting four months to receive it.

And as far comparing it to the Arduino... it's really not a good comparison. The RPi can play full 1080p video, decode DVDs, run a webserver, and interface with any USB device it has drivers for. To do that, an Arduino would either need a very skilled programmer, or some fairly costly shields (plates? Whatever the daughter boards are called). Or, a shorter explanation:

You can plug an Arduino into a Raspberry Pi in about two seconds (using a USB cord), but it would take quite a while (and lots of programming) to plug a Raspberry Pi into an Arduino.

They both have their use, but what I'm most excited about is both of them *together*.

Re: Facebook users have *never* been seen as "members"

There are other services that only have customers because people like them. Say, for instance, web comics. I've seen more than one web comic author down on his (or her) luck with medical bills or what have you, and his loyal fans actually sent money. no reason other than the fact that they really liked his comic.

On the other hand, there are services that people need, but don't want. If you own a service that everyone wants, fine; people hate facebook, and yet they still have accounts with them, right? To some, it's a necessary evil. They need a facebook account for their job, perhaps. They are locked in to a service that they don't want, but they still need. If facebook died today, there would only be sadness in that everyone would have to learn how to use Google Plus (or whatever), and they lost their scores on MafiaFarm.

The problem is not with thinking of customers as cash cows. The problem is *asking* customers to *be* cash cows. The webcomic author didn't need to ask to get money, because people loved him already. Facebook doing the same? They can expect, at best, a hearty laugh at their expense. People don't love facebook. People use facebook. When the next "best thing" comes along, facebook will be as dead as MySpace.

Re: Historical Cost of Nukes

To be fair... all forms of energy production, be it nuclear, wind, hydro dams, you name it - everything except the most basic coal fired plant - has required government funding, including wars. I don't know for sure, but I'm betting that anyone on the national grid, supplying power, has had several government handouts at least.

And the only replacement offered by the anti-coal/anti-nuke crowd is fully renewable energy - if there is any technology that's had more government investment than nuclear, it's wind and solar energy.

But more to the point - where do you see "no more research"? I thought it was a bit more like "stop being idiots, a windmill can't replace a coal power station, cut your hair, get a job, etc., etc."

Re: Strange units

111 120 Kilometers Under the Sea just doesn't have the same ring to it...

He *is* going into the utility business.

If this is supposed to mimic a city, it will need power, water, waste, and other facilities. However, since there is no one there to use those services, the city becomes a huge exporter. Cities use a lot of water and energy; the fact that they consume all the resources they create (and then some) doesn't mean that they aren't still producing. And all those resources have to go somewhere; might as well sell them, right?

Re: I remember when 802.11a came out...

Ah, yes, you're right. Time must be compressing my memory... by the time I bought a router, 'b' had been out for at least a year. Still, I do remember him making fun of my purchase... maybe it was just sour grapes by then.

I know several people who invested in 'n' right when it first came out, only to realize that the various manufacturers all thought 'n' was something a little different... that's gotten a lot better by now, at least.

Re: How long before

Actually... I can't be bothered to find the link, but this was discussed, if not implemented - circling drones, providing mesh connectivity back to a stable point (or a sat link) until regular antennas can be placed. Since drones can remain aloft for quite some time, it's not a bad idea. As long as you can handle the initial investment, that is...