Posts by Horridbloke

Re: Is there not enough junk up there already ?

The payload had "SPACE JUNK" written on the side of it in big letters. Crafty beggers those ruskies.

Re: Has WiRED

I gave up on WiRED some years ago after reading about someone running OS X on their iPhone. In fact they were just running a VNC client (that somebody else had written) but that distinction was too subtle for the author of the article.

Re: I wonder why ?

I made the mistake of wandering into one of their branches several years ago to try and buy an unlocked handset. The sales slug couldn't believe somebody could be so demented as to want such a thing and pulled in a second sales slug to help teach me the error of my ways and to show me the contract I actually wanted (never mind the fact I had asked for something specific that the shop allegedly had for sale). After a couple of minutes of obnoxious high-pressure sales pitch I thanked them for their time and walked out but I can see how some people fall for it.

Carphone Warehouse were angels by comparison, at least they would sell you an unlocked phone without arguing and the larger branches had powered-up models you could play with so that expensive purchase was less of a pig in a poke. I say "were" because, well, you know who owns them now...

Re: Who is Tom ...

The emphasis should be on "actor".

Re: If apple had such great mouse designers...

Apple obviously hired some really bad mouse designers as well.

Re: Q from the US

"no home user really needs this kind of speed"...

I suppose it depends on ones definition of "need" but I recently bought and installed the new Wolfenstein game via Steam and that was a 40 or 50 gigabyte download - an inconceivable figure not so long ago. That wasn't too painful on our 40Mb connection but these things just keep getting bigger.

Weirdly enough we're on Virgin and I'm pretty sure our connection has been throttled to 40Mb - our peak download speeds were much faster when we got connected a year back.

Re: For £3.5m

They could spend the £6.5m surplus on a film about midget porn.

Re: Patent This!

That's a nice idea but the screen would need a ridiculously high refresh/update speed.

@returnmyjedi

Agreed. Sort it out Reg, it isn't rocket science.

Re: Mirror, mirror...

The trying-on-outfits-virtually-via-pseudo-mirror idea featured in an episode of the short-lived Max Headroom US scifi "drama" from the late eighties. (If you missed it, the show was based on the original Twenty minutes into the future Channel 4 production and looks horribly dated nowdays.)

I suppose that counts as prior art should anyone try patenting the idea.

Re: Ultra Realistic 3D Games

Google Earth Deathmatch perhaps?

Re: This might be the first time a machine has passed it

Estate agents fail the Turing Test every working day of their lives. They also invoke the "uncanny valley". I was talking to an EA the other month and become convinced she was animatronic.

Re: They fail to "read-only" mode.

... except when they don't.

I had a Samsung 840 pro fail utterly and without warning on me three months after purchase. Nothing I tried it with even recognised there was a storage device there.

(I was pleasantly surprised when the backup successfully restored and the replacement has been good so far.)

Re: I think it's a lenticular display

There were a number of android slabs boasting lenticular displays for sale at Bangkok's Pantip Plaza when I visited a couple of years ago. Those displays weren't great, but there's been time to improve that part of the equation and I can see Amazon using that with online 3d film or game delivery to draw more people into their ecosystem.

Re: Churchillian feint

Agreed, the whole thing smells of either misdirection or intimidation.

Re: animal's natural diet

The animal doesn't really have a natural diet, because it isn't a natural animal. The domestic breeds used to produce beef or milk are a long way removed from the beasts our ancestors first decided to corral and use.

Re: Transparent display?

It's potentially useful when photographing fast-moving subjects such as martial arts bouts. My current digital compact takes the shot almost immediately when I press the button, however the display on the back of it lags by about half a second. It's therefore not possible to watch the bout through the display because by the time you see something happening the moment has passed. The current workaround is to not look at the display, keep things reasonably wide-angle and hope the camera is pointing in the right direction.

(In theory an SLR is better, however that can suffer from being TOO fast - I found I had to slow myself down to grab the perfect glove-in-face moment.)

I don't claim to be any sort of photography expert, but this transparency gimmick seems weirdly suited to this problem.

Re: talk louder for Siri to hear you

Siri would then mutter darkly about those funny-looking coloured phones that have just moved in.

Re: OMG lolkatz

I thought it was called the Enternet.

Re: Funny thing is

I once got a "Welcome to the Isle of Man" roaming text whilst in Wales (Amlwch to be exact).

IT'S CHEEEEEAAAAAP!!!!!

"Much of the widely-alleged benefit of offshoring sounds like a typical tunnel-vision fantasy of a stereotypical accountant."

Bingo. I while ago I worked at a UK software outfit that had been bought up by US dot-com lunatics. At one point there were several IT professionals from India visiting the officers on six-month stints and supposedly learning the ropes. The phrase "Don't worry, you're not training up your replacements" was uttered numerous times. A development office was opened in India, the folks there got access to our CM system and the fun really started.

I'm sure there are lots of educated, capable and very well motivated technical types in India, but the people we were asked to work with were about as good as a random UK-born chav would be if plonked into a development role and expected to produce with no pertinent training. Of course there were language problems to contend with as well. I had the impression the US overlords had travelled to India and hired the cheapest people they could find there.

This was all a bit ironic considering the cash the people stateside were burning on nice offices and perks, but given they didn't respect the engineering function I suppose it made sense.

Re: @fibbles

"Tried that as a student project"

Well done on at least trying it.

Re: Somebody put it far better than I could...

Err, I don't think anyone is suggesting Stephen Fry is an idiot.

He's famous primarily for having a lovely voice and the veneer of cosy authority the BBC and advertisers go for. He's done very well on it and that level of success doesn't come without a good dollop of initiative and drive but why should anyone take any more notice of him than, say, Keith Chegwin?