Posts by Dave 126

Re: ..."a whopping 80 per cent of crashes ... involved male drivers"

>Is this figure correct? Are you sure about it. I thought the figures showed that women have more crashes overall, its just that men have more bigger crashes.

That was the conclusion I read about some years ago, I can't remember the source but I think it was from car insurers. There is no reason why small bumps would be reported to insurers.

If we agree that the difference between a small 'bump' and a 'crash' is that a bump doesn't cause damage that either party cares about, then we need to look at car design. It depends on the design of car bumpers, which, alas, aren't as robust as they used to be, and many are damaged by bumps of less than 5mph ('Which?' magazine drew attention to this a few years back)

Re: 20/20 ... AVG -- Won't happen

>Was 20/20 based on a sampled average originally?

No, it wasn't - and it isn't normalised like IQ scores are. It means nothing more than being able to read text of a certain size from 20' away.

Re: 20/20 ... AVG -- Won't happen

>Neither of the quotes you have supplied supports your assertion that the average person has better than 20/20 vision.

In the first quote, Snellen, the man who developed the eye test chart that bears his name, warns not to confuse his base value of 20/20 for a population average, yet you persist in doing so. And I haven't seen any links from you support that 20/20 is average, either.

I have better than 20/20 vision when I'm wearing my spectacles.

Here is yet another link supporting the assertion that Steve Jobs was guilty of hyperbole when introducing the Retina Display:

Analyst Challenges Apple's iPhone 4 'Retina Display' Claims

- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp

Re: Seems a bit pointless

Instead of lazily downvoting me, can someone please point out which of my assertions they believe to be factually incorrect? To make it easy for you, you can merely post a number, or several. Thanks!

1. It's premature to call a product feature 'pointless' when it is just a rumour and the intended use of the device is yet unknown. A desk-based machine might not require as long lasting a battery as a more mobile device.

2. Wacom make very expensive Android and Win8 13" tablets

3. Modbook make 13" OSX tablets based on Macbook Pros

4. Apple could easily undercut the Modbook Pro spec by spec - because the Modbook is the full price of Macbook plus extra parts and labour.

5. Adobe are making hardware to allow iPads to be used more productively.

7. The market is not currently that big, but it does exist.

Re: Seems a bit pointless

>That's just ridiculous. So who has the first 64 bit processor in a mobile phone?

That doesn't benefit the customer directly now, but does mean the transition to higher RAM in the future will be smoother - for application developers, especially. Apple have a financial interest in their application marketplace, in a way Android phone vendors don't in theirs.

Re: 20/20 ... AVG -- Won't happen

20/20 is purely a measure of one's ability to identify letters in a certain typeface and of a certain size from a distance of twenty feet.

> You might have written "many people have ..."

I might have, but I didn't. What I wrote was less vague and just as accurate. The average person does have better than 20/20 vision:

...both Snellen and Donders noted that acuity levels of better than 20/20 were common in normal individuals, and both cautioned against a conclusion that their norm values represented normal visual acuity. Unfortunately, these cautioning remarks have rarely been heeded..."

- http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00413146#page-1

he significance of the 20/20 standard can best be thought of as the lower limit of normal or as a screening cutoff. When used as a screening test subjects that reach this level need no further investigation, even though the average visual acuity of healthy eyes is 20/16 to 20/12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity#Normal_vision

Re: Seems a bit pointless

>4k res in a 12" tablet seems pointless, the battery life will suffer and the GPU would need a massive upgrade to actually do much at the full res, so we'd see a lot of up-scaled stuff totally negating having the 4k res in the first place.

Pointless?

We don't know anything about this rumoured device.... it might be that it is designed to be used mainly in the studio as a graphic design / Photoshop tool, for example. In this case use, the battery wouldn't be a too big an issue. There is a market for this, albeit a currently small one, since Wacom will sell you a 13" tablet ('Companion'), as will Modbook (based in a gutted Macbook Pro)... and Apple could easily undercut the price of either of those models, spec for spec. Adobe are looking into this area too, with their first foray into hardware (see Mighty Pen and Napoleon Ruler)

Same here, my first thought on hearing of this Amazon plan was that they would be based on a 'carrier' truck.

Thanks for bringing the UP to our attention Tanuki!

"A small cordite charge was used to ignite a rocket motor which propelled the fin-stabilized 7 inches (18 cm) diameter rocket out of the tube to a distance of about 1,000 feet (300 m) where it exploded and released an 8.4 ounces (240 g) mine attached to three parachutes by 400 feet (120 m) of wire. The idea was that an aeroplane hitting the wire would draw the mine towards itself where it would detonate.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrotated_Projectile

Re: why distruction

>I don't get why you'd want to blow the drone out of the sky?

(a) for sport

(b) for a thought exercise. Of course, adding the constraint that the parcel must be undamaged adds to the challenge!

I'm leaning towards (b) myself

Re: Oh deer!!

The round you describe increases your range and accuracy, but what you lose is the spread of shot with conventional shotgun rounds. Okay for a large target ( a deer) but not for a small, distant and fast target (duck or drone).

I'm aware that there is quite a variety of specialist shotgun ammunition available to law enforcement / military organisations.

Re: Weapons

An 'offensive weapon' in the UK is whatever a police officer at the time decides is one, depending on context. Carrying a cricket bat to a park in the afternoon? Sporting equipment. Carrying a cricket bat at 3 AM outside a nightclub? Offensive weapon.

Shotgun properly secured in boot of car on the way to a shoot? Sporting equipment.

Re: remote control rockets

The mathematical equation requires data... wind speed, for example, can vary along the path taken by the rocket en route to the target. I don't know what the limitations of laser anemometers are, but it is plausible that they might allow the margin of error to be reduced - if indeed said margin is too high.

Re: Brits forgetting their past?

The solution I had in mind was similar in concept to a barrage balloon, but based on a quadcopter instead of a balloon, for the sake of manoeuvrability. Instead of chains fixed to the ground, the quadcopter would trail dental floss - much like a jellyfish's tentacles - to tangle in the target's rotors.

I've liked the responses to the challenge... maybe Farting Hippo's net concept could be used with rockets?

Re: Guns won't work, so let's look at alternatives...

@Jan 0

Haha, I do know what string is, and bailer-twine too! Dental floss is strong and light, and also cheap compared to fishing line. If you've ever used a mini RC helicopter to take down out-of-reach cobwebs in an old cottage, you'll know how string spider silk is, too (but it doesn't have the bulk to quickly disable the chopper)

@Ledswinger,

The plane could go faster, but the target drone might be more agile. Let us not disagree, let us test!

@Farting Hippo

I like it! Perhaps a bolas might also do the trick if we can't sort out the spinning net mechnism

Re: Look at the profit...

Good point Destroy All Monsters, I took MrE's figures and didn't consider the non-recurrent engineering (R&D and tooling) costs.

Re: Look at the profit...

Jai's correct, the profit on the software and the on-line gaming subscriptions will quickly dwarf that $10 difference. What is more telling is that neither console is being sold at a loss.

Re: Ad business model

Haha, that's why I chose the word 'require' with care!

You might benefit from a compass, waterproof map and a pair of fancy boots, but you can still go for a walk with just what nature gave you (some clothing is recommended though)! : D

Re: Ad business model

There is a greater variety of videos on YouTube, so it attracts a greater variety of advertisers. Not only that, but videos often relate to activities on which money will be spent. For example, if you're watching a video for tips on tiling and grouting your bathroom, there's a fair chance you'll soon be spending money in a hardware store. By contrast, the activities associated with the viewing of adult sites require no investment in equipment.

Also, I'm not sure how well the model does work for YouTube; the increasing intrusiveness of the ads and Reg articles about Google's plans to charge for music videos suggest that it might not be bringing in enough money.

Good point about dafter sites possibly copying and pasting. Relax though, the $1.5m price tag might mean only technologically illiterate greedy millionaires are defrauded. With luck, pension funds will seek the source article and demand proof.

Relax. The Reg didn't want to patronise its readers by pointing out the bleedingly obvious. The lines were fairly easy to read between.

Anyway, any article that mentions Disk Smith (who in addition to being a founder of the Australian Skeptics is also an entrepreneur, pilot, philanthropist and practical joker - he was on a double-decker bus that jumped sixteen motorcycles and bought a fake iceberg into Sydney Harbour) and promotes his work is a good thing. He's happy to call these charlatans on their bluff. The trouble is, they know it.

I would recommend this chummy interview between Dick Smith and the man who gave us the One Eyed trouser Snake song, fellow Skeptic Philip Adams, in which he recounts his solo round the world helicopter flight, a massive Electronic Dick and beetroot. You couldn't make it up. (MP3)

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/dick-smith/4415572

(The misspelling of Skeptic is a nod to a previous group)

Re: No nVidia = no CUDA = No deal

The Toshiba KiraBook and Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 also have very high res screens, but don't offer a dedicated graphics card. The Intel graphics aren't as shabby as they used to be, but obviously don't do CUDA.

The 15" Macbook Pro Retina with the pricey component package (faster CPU, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD and nVidia GT 750m) might fulfil your needs but it costs over £2,000. Maybe a solution based on a cheaper Macbook and an nVidia card housed in a Thunderbolt chassis might be suitable for you.

Also, does your software scale properly on a high res display? Applications one might expect to behave (such as Photoshop) don't.

Are there any other nVidia high res laptops out there?

Re: Whether it's an Xbox one or PS4

Anecdotally, that seems to be the attitude amongst my PS3 and XBOX 360 owning friends- wait until the new consoles get a bit cheaper, wait until the list of available games get bigger and reviews are published...

And besides, they're still working their way through GTA5 or BF4 on their existing kit.

Re: If you still manage to get one

It'd be easier to just return it under The Sales of Goods Act, or the Distance Selling Regulations.

It's better to save the soldering iron for something that is cheaper and simpler.

Re: What about keeping XP?

Keeping XP secure...

Here's an idea, though I haven't thought it out fully:

Can the XP machine be set up so that a breach of security isn't the end of the world? Regular image back-ups of the system, get Mr 12 into backing up documents that are important to him, that sort of thing... i.e use the risk of a security breach to instil some good habits in Mr 12.

However, I don't know how Mr 12 will be able to keep his on-line credentials safe against a keylogger or password sniffer... is there a secure browser available that doesn't store passwords in plaintext?

Anyway, it's just a thought, and I'd welcome thoughts on whether its stupid or not.

> It would be nice if we could assemble a tool set without having to remember the pop culture and in-jokes of a bunch of 30 something nerds.

I agree with you in the general case, but not in this specific case.

Cauliflower Vest et al are internal tools, likely used by the people who developed them. As such, they might have been named after an event that the team remembers -"Hey, remember that time we were writing that boring tool and Bob spilt cauliflower soup down his shirt?". Names like "Tool 654" or "OSXFV2RKES" are instantly forgettable by comparison. Should they open-source CanHazImage, they can rename it then, just as consumer software often has an internal codename before release.

Software for the public does benefit from a more intuitive names. Media Player, Notepad, Paint etc give a clue to their function. The GIMP? Not so much, and if Penguins really wanted to broaden the adoption of desktop Linux it is something they might want to address.