Posts by Eddie Edwards

Well if it got through the approval process despite being, you know, *MAME*, then maybe Apple are tolerating this kind of thing now.

AFAICT from the contract, as long as it doesn't allow you to download ROMs, but only copy them in (which can be done using iTunes, BTW) then it should be OKish, apart from the obvious "incitement to copyright infringement" thing.

Interesting because I have a GTA Radio player which I'd like to put up but this would rely on the same basic mechanism - copy the files from the GTA disc to the phone using iTunes, in technical violation of copyright. Hmm, Christmas project? :)

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Downloading iMAME right now ...

Roomba

Can't you take a roomba and add some kind of internal blade thingy to make it cut grass?

Resisting being tasered is not the same as resisting arrest.

Does anyone play these?

I'd drop £3 for the novelty value, but I'd never finish the game with those controls. Does anyone here actually play through games like this on iPhone? How do you avoid dropping the iPhone the whole time while holding it and using both thumbs? Am I just an old codger who doesn't get it? (I used to get it, but then "it" changed, and what I got wasn't "it" any more.)

Iron Maiden

Reminds me of when Iron Maiden released "Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter" the week after Xmas and hit number 1 since no one bought singles the week after Xmas.

They were trumped by Enigma two weeks later and never returned to #1.

(Paris, because she's no maiden and I doubt she can iron.)

API?

So is there an API for this so apps can load/save to Skydrive or is it just an app to let you browse files with no hope of using them? Couldn't get much from the links. The former makes it at least interesting. Anyone know, or even have a link to the iOS SDK download?

Surprised at 80%

Given the poor quality of the produced panoramas (discontinuous kerb slopes, blurring of bricks and windows) I'm surprised this gets 80%. It seems to me that the devs are using the gyroscope as a hack to help them fix a poor-quality seaming algorithm. Considering what could be done with a proper understanding of the mapping from pixel to ray and using the gyroscope and accelerometer data to improve the matching process (i.e. SLAM), this seems like more of a novelty item.

There are dozens of panorama apps on the iPhone which achieve similar quality, and most of them are free.

Depends how smart

It depends how "smart" the TV is.

If it shows the entire C4 back catalogue, like the 4oD website does, then gimme. It's a mine of awesome comedy shows.

If it just shows a selection from the last few weeks, like my PS3 already does, then don't bother. I don't need to pay good money for another crippled piece of tech.

Very cool

Lovely explanation; now please do one for quantum computing :) The new chip is way more interesting than the fact that the Higgs boson still hasn't been discovered but it's still where they thought it was in the summer :)

As for the Standard Model, it's pretty much known to be incorrect. Not only does it exclude gravitons or any other form of gravity, it also fails to explain dark matter and/or dark energy. So finding the Higgs shows the SM is consistent, but not that it's correct :)

Shame you didn't answer my favourite question about BBC One HD, which is why the hell can't they show SD programs on the same channel where HD is unavailable, instead of making me switch back to BBC One (not HD)? Sky One HD manages this amazing technical feat quite well.

Prince Andrew?

Prince Andrew? It looks more like Neil Tennant.

Love the Register's new gossip column.

Better explanation?

So this, to me, is the kind of tech that makes quantum computing seem less like ivory tower bullshit and more like coming soon awesomeness.

But the field has moved far enough that the jargon used to simply explain what the hell this thing actually does is out of my league.

Has anyone found a nice article that goes further than reporting this, and tries to explain what exactly it can do; what all these various entangled qubit pairs and single mixed qubits are good for; and where the chip really places us w.r.t. the ability to construct a useful quantum computer that can, say, factorize a 4096-digit number?

I get the feeling this is kind of the "programmable logic cell" of quantum computing (like the 4-bit LUTs inside FPGAs). So it may be really straightforward to couple lots of these together and make something that works. But it would be awesome to get some detail on that and maybe a hint that the design rules from hereon might be simple enough for normal people (with math degrees) to grasp :)

Plenty to gain

The customer may not gain anything, but the customers behind him in the queue will. Either time, since he's paying quicker, or his credit card details, if they have an NFC skimmer.

Superb

Shame Sony snuck in and got the exclusive, but hey, we can't expect the BBC to favour license payers over commercial interests. Glad for my PS3 :) Although all we've seen is a hastily-constructed promo video, and it takes longer than a year to add "photo-real graphics and television-quality scenes" especially if you're a minor developer. Maybe in 2014, or maybe it will suck just like every other Dr Who game has. I smell a low budget, even if Sony are involved. Still, staying hopeful ...

Odd choice of CPUs

I would have thought he'd go for more nostalgia. It's mostly Intel and AMD x86 parts. No ARM done.

Still it does show that Kickstarter is an effective way to get pre-orders (and publicity!) He's well on the way in only 2 days.

Anonymized

No need to worry! The data is being anonymized! This means they will remove your name, but include your age and postcode (no shit).

Overblown much? :p

"For the past 22 years they have been not merely space probes but star probes"

That's like saying when I'm in my garden I'm visiting my neighbour's house. They're still WAY closer to the sun than to any other star.

Also, her 39-year mission? When launched in 1977? Someone needs a new calculator.

Still, it's amazing that the probe is still functioning after 34 years, and the timeline (Voyager was launched when I was 5, and I just celebrated my 40th birthday) really gives you a sense of how big space is, when it's not even out of the vicinity of the sun after all this time!

http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2011/iphone4s_20111201.html

"What do you like best about your iPhone 4S"

Total of all responses: 222%.

Shame the Reg missed out the next question on the survey. It's a corker:

"Do you trust statistics compiled from incoherent surveys?"

Yes: 80%

No: 80%

Not sure: 50%

Rik is a troll and this story is stupid

What is this, the Daily Mail? The stupid, it hurts ...

Web utopians

Of course, it's possible that the real "web utopians" are the people that think Facebook is so valuable that people will pay extra for it.

It's just possible that Facebook is free today because free is its actual value. I'm certainly not seeing anything about the concept of "price elasticity" in Orlowski's latest pro-corporate piece - the idea that once you start charging more, you lose customers. Price elasticity is generally considered as a function of price ratio, and guess what? A ratio of N:0 is infinite.

Of course, email and Facebook etc. *do* have value. That value can neatly be summed up, as it's the figure I'm already paying to my ISP, in return for which I can access them.

Another thing to think about is that Facebook is all user-generated content. So the day they start charging us to access the content is the day they're also going to have to start paying us for providing the content. Net result?

Enormous flight deck

The enormous flight deck was introduced with Paul McGann's doctor (that Americanized single-episoder is still officially part of the mythos!). It's about the only part of that reimagining that stuck.

LOL

"Users download the software and act as peers for search, ensuring that no content can be censored and no search results can be recorded and analyzed on central servers."

Yay, because that's exactly the features that corporations want on intranet search.

LOL.

Double workload?

Actually, it should triple the workload. You render the 3D eye-views (x2) then you render the 2D view.

Except, clearly you don't always. Arthur Christmas in 2D had these hideous jittering artifacts that I can only put down to coming from some fucked up reconstruction of the 2D movie from the 3D sources. Starts at frame #1, if you're on the lookout for it. I would have walked out if I wasn't there with 8-year-old in tow (who hates 3D - good taste).

Seriously, Hollywood, sort your shit out.

Hobbyist machine, not a revolution, ffs

Come on people, this is 2011, not 1981. The "nightmare of frameworks and compilers" is what allows 90% of developers to earn a living programming. They neither need nor want to run "on the metal", or write "tight code". And neither should they; the democratisation of software authorship is predicated on machines having the power to run high-level systems and languages. This idea goes against that, and harks back to a time 30 years ago when only nerds programmed. It's a piece of nostalgia, plain and simple.

In case you guys haven't noticed, the marketability of low-level coding skills is diminishing year on year, and has been for over a decade. Sorry, but you don't expand the workforce to become coders by propagating an 80s myth about the level of elite skills required for the job, and going on about "coding to the metal" or how we did things when we were lads. Jesus. You may as well try to expand mining in this country by teaching kids to swing a pick-axe.

It's nice to have a cheap Linux board, but it's not exactly a revolutionary idea, and if cheap Linux boards are so desirable why weren't schools buying them in their millions at the £60 price point? We're being asked to believe this is a revolution, but the truth of that has to be based on there being this immense price sensitivity in the market, which doesn't seem likely given that the prices of bare-board systems have been dropping steadily for the last 10 years and they are still just hobbyist items. Is the next 50% discount really going to make them suddenly go mainstream?

I can't be the only person who thinks the hype around this is ridiculous, can I? Computers are all about SOFTWARE, it is software which makes them flexible, it is software where the cool stuff is happening that's relevant to a maturing market, and that software is becoming better because it leans on other software. And yet everyone creams their pants when a new piece of hardware comes out that is identical to a hundred other pieces of hardware, but at a somewhat lower price point. It's staggering.

Here's an idea - if you want kids to learn programming, demand they are given programming courses at school, on the existing kit. Create a demand for simpler development environments. And start by looking at what we already have - Javascript in the browser is an easy way for anyone to get started. You can begin simple and build up, it's a high-level language, it works, it's safe, it's sandboxed, it's fast compared to even the best 8-bit machines, it has its own sprite engine and lately its own 3D layer, and you don't have to buy any new hardware. Most importantly, it's a still-relevant skill, and will likely outlast the current generation of secondary school kids by some time.

Expecting to be downvoted for this, don't worry :) You do what you have to do :)

Yes, yes, but climate change was first mooted in the 80s, and yet the group of people loudly complaining that it might not be true have only really started doing so since the science became politicized. The movement against is a reaction to the social consequences of the science, not the science itself (although it's an attempt to attack the root cause of those social consequences, which is of course the science).

So, on the one hand, we have a scientific theory which has become politicized, and on the other hand, an "against" movement which has been politicized from the outset.

So, AT VERY LEAST, let's not pretend that it's only the scientists that are embroiled in this "systemic failure" of yours, Andrew. It would be trivial to write this article with the completely opposite slant on whether or not climate change is real, focusing on the all-too-human motivations of those who don't want to end up paying more for energy today just because it *might* fuck the planet up for their kids, and how the beliefs of people are painted more by what they wish were true, rather than any ideal of evidence or fact, which is a psychological truth you're ignoring on only one side (and please note that scientists do actually receive some training in learning the difference between ideals and actualities).

Hidden secret or typo?

"Reportedly the glyph in question is carved into the back of a brick found in ancient temple ruins - suggesting that it was a hidden secret, not meant to be seen"

So either (a) it was a hidden secret, only meant to be found by someone after thousands of years, or (b) it was a typo, hidden so people didn't notice one mason's "monumental" cock-up.

HFT

Odd choice of example. It seems that with a few trillion dollars we could build a SUPER fast trans-light, trans-atlantic link for High Frequency Trading. Shave those naneseconds!

Sub-ether radio, anyone?

Dithering

Spot on explanation of dithering, although isn't "granulation noise" usually referred to as "quantization noise"?

It is rather remarkable that a 1/2LSB sine wave without dithering becomes a square wave to the ear, while a 1/2LSB sine wave with dithering sounds like a sine wave + white noise.