Posts by Dave 126 10672 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010
> the author was imagining abstracting real-time face changes as they would apply to a pre-existing facial "avatar" of the subject; which would allow only avatar-relevant updates to be transmitted;
This could be a good approach, if the aim of the video call is to aid expression and communication - after all, it could easily fix the 'eye contact' problem caused by the monitor and the web cam being in different places.
The superconductor wire doesn't need to operate at room temperatures to be usuable. The composite cable, comprised of the superconductor, coolant and insulation, does.
Such things are used in some cities where the advantage of a smaller cross section of cable makes up for the expanse - and faff of cooling stations every X metres.
Our best thermal insulation materials (porous aerogel supporting a vacuum) are a bit delicate.
Alternative stratagies that have been proposed include using sun power in hot countries to produce hydrogen, ammonia or bioethanol and then shipping it (or pipeline) to where it can be used (and if course the power density of bioethanol over batteries make it a good fit for transport).
I love pie menus - though I only use see them in a CAD application. The pie menu is just so quick for for selecting a tool. Confused as to why they are not more common.
The same CAD application also let's you configure menus, tool palettes, 'ribbons', keyboard shortcuts... whatever is your poison, basically. It's almost as if they care about their users.
If I'm reading it right, global menus have been shown to be faster because the user accelerates the mouse pointer to the top of the screen, where it stops. They don't have to slow the cursor down, as they would if aiming at a window's menu bar
(It's like travelling to the moon - you can get there faster for the same fuel if you're happy to use lithobraking instead of retro rockets to scrub your velocity)
> It used to be a pet peeve of mine that every GNOME app used to start with a G and every KDE app would start with a K,
There was a book of Gary Larson cartoon that had an index at the back... It looked like this
A
B
C..
..S
The one with the ants on the donut
The one with the beagle
The one with the cat by a piranha bowl...
...
X
Y
Z
>There should be an explicit photo editor that lets someone fix red eye, crop, frame, filter etc. from a simple user interface.
Google's Picassa used to be very good for that (crop, level, rotate, basic levels, red eye removal etc) and it was quick to use because it didn't use the traditional Open > Edit > Save [As] method - changes were made virtually and not to the original image file.
> Actually "wacky" names like GIMP are an advantage where you can at least search for related information.
That's a fair point; there are downsides to giving an application an overly generic name. However, I still believe that names that hint at the function of an application ( Inkscape, Word, Paint Shop, SolidWorks etc etc) lowers the mental overheads for newcomers.
If just one or two applications have wacky names, well, yeah, the user can get a handle on it quite quickly. But if the package is littered with wacky names for every common type of program, the poor novice user has to juggle say a dozen fuzzy names in their brain - head space they could be better use to complete whatever tasks they sat at the computer to do in the first place. Head space they could better use to learn sone handy nuances, concepts and efficiencies.
[Please pass me a hammer. Lump hammer or tack hammer? Oh, tack hammer. Here you go. Thank you. ]
[Please pass me a hammer. Stanley or Ewing? Just pass me a sodding hammer!]
... could be achieved by labelling GIMP as 'Photo editor' or some such.
There's nothing wrong with the name of an application giving a clue as to its function.
Okay, okay, everybody knows the GIMP by now, possibly. But how many times have you thought, 'Ah, yeah, I remember installing an Android app that does X... now, what the bloody hell was it called?'
It really depends upon the software. With enough thought, the software (soft keyboard, better cursor control) could make Excel significantly easier to use on this twin screened device than it currently is in a normal Android phone. This doesn't answer your question, but it does reformulate your question to:
Are there people out there who would pay a premium for a really usuable Excel that fits in their pocket?
(Possibly)
The iPad might be a good thing to be holding in front of your face when the lead singer throws a brick at you!
To propose a way of dissuading twits from holding phones up in concerts: set the gig up with more professional cameras aimed at the audience as well as the act. Set up a portal so that audience members, after they get home, can find footage of themselves happily moshing without a the distraction of a phone like it's 1999. This would satisfy people's evident desire for 'proof they were there', and do so better than their own camera phones. And they might not want to be shown in high Res video being the only twit holding up a camera.
I dunno, could it work?
They didn't follow their logic far enough to see that it's conclusion was that Microsoft's designers are complete idiots who aren't following due process. Not anl totally impossible scenario, but it is sufficiently unlikely that it should cause someone to pause and re-examine their assumptions.
In reality, near the top of Microsoft's design considerations would be written:
*Phone must last around a day in order to be competive with rivals and avoid negative reviews in the press.*
And from that follows:
*Extra screen increases power draw. Therefore a larger battery will be specified.*
With good software it could be worthwhile - despite the tag that is double two similarly specced phones. ( The MS Courier concept from years ago always appealed to me - it presented itself as a good mobile notebook for gathering and organising notes and ideas, rather than trying to be a small laptop)
With really good software, you could get the same functionality on any two Android devices.
It'd be good if a framework was created that made two (or more) Android devices behave as one device with two screens - that way folk could build their own version of the MS phone with existing devices and a roll of duck tape (or some adhesive velcro, perhaps). Seamless copy and paste, one device is the soft keyboard,, thatt of thing.
Another function might be akin to the Adobe iOS app that turns an iPhone into a tool palette for Photoshop on the Mac.
It's also cheaper to test this thing in LEO than it is further out. If it works in LEO then a future mission to test such computers can be planned. If it doesn't work in LEO then it's back to the drawing board with the lessons learnt from this jaunt.
In any case, a computer of this type won't be used for mission critical tasks on a trip to Mars - it's overkill. Hardware rad-hardened computers, though far less powerful than this thing, are ample for the mission critical tasks such as navigation and life support etc.
ABC, Australia's national broadcaster, roughly equivalent to the BBC, is also being starved of funds.
The ABC also had its offices raised by police for 'national security reasons' after publishing allegations of war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan. A News Corp journalistic also had her flat raided.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-51526607
It is possible to have a broad conversation about what work is for, whether it is purely to provide food, shelter and sanitary facilities, or whether it is to provide people with a sense of purpose, or perhaps it has become a means of determining status in lieu of ceremonial dancing, fighting or willy waving.
Some ways of starting such a conversation are better than others. For example, famous Welshman Bertrand Russell penned an essay titled The Case for a Leisure Economy. A fair gambit. Conversely, just writing 'utterly stupid' just doesn't cut it.
It sounds like a UI issue... we're all used to the convention of a flashing red dot on a camera to denote video is being recorded, or a red light outside a radio studio to denote that a live broadcast is in progress.
A similarly clear, unmissable visual element should be used by the teleconferencing software to denote that video - and audio - is being sent. Perhaps the audio indicator could take the form of a graphical 'recording level' indicator.
Some tasks involve monitoring many things... CCTV feeds, live broadcast editing from multiple feeds, stock markets, industrial control, monitoring network health... for these scenarios, merely switching between applications might not be suitable.
I don't do those things. For me, I think one main screen plus one smaller for tool palettes, combined with task switching and maybe virtual desktops, would do nicely most of the time.
Give it a year or so... Samsung Display is said to be ramping up production of laptop-size OLED screens for OEMs. OLED screens produce far less blue light than standard LED displays.
The potential for saving energy by using OLEDs (depends on drivers and colour scheme of desktop theme and applications) would be useful for this multiscreened machine.
> Would you want to try and unfold that on a train or in the car?
No, I wouldn't! It's clearly 'designed'* to be used with external power.
Outside film crews and military command types - folk who have a need for quickly deployable multiple screens and good ergonomics - tend to roll their own solutions from flight cases or Pelican cases.
*At the risk of denigrating the discipline of product 'design' by associating it with this laptop. I suspect it may have been designed to get attention, in which case it is successful.
From 2008, the ThinkPad W700ds had a secondary portrait screen (same height as main screen ) that pulled out. It also had a Wacom digitiser built in to the left of the trackpad for good measure. (And a ThinkPad nipple, too!)
It was sold as a Mobile Workstation, and contained nVidia Quadra graphics.
I'm with you, chivo243.
My first thoughts are that a flight case or Pelican case would be a better starting point for a multiscreened portable workstation.
This thing at 12 kilograms still has to be periodically stowed and removed from a protective bag (an awkward operation), whereas a flight case base design can just be 'unfolded'.
My other criticism of this design is that the ergonomics - as dicticated by the height of the keyboard above the desk, and the height of the main screen with respect to the keyboard - are not optimal. Again, a flight case design could use use a standalone keyboard.
So, flight case design advantages: quicker deployment, better ergonomics in use, more durable in transit, components such as keyboard easily swapped out.
@illiad
It looks like you didn't even read @tiggity's first sentence in its entirety. He did not suggest that anyone trust Wikipedia.
I.e, use Wikipedia as a *starting point*, and explore the referenced sources.
Of course there is more to it than that, just as it can take experience to differentiate between a replicated science paper and one that is awaiting review.
It's extremely unlikely that Apple knowingly decided to go with poor reception in order to maintain an aesthetic - after all, the antenna issue was fixed in the iPhone 5, and that looked much the same as its predecessor.
Most likely, the radio antenna issue wasn't picked up in early user testing because the iPhone 4 test units were in a plastic case (to allow the test units to be used in public 'real world' situations without disclosing its appearance), a plastic case that mitigated the antenna issues just as the production bumper cases later would.
Medical environments might benefit from devices that have no split lines or other crevices for bugs to hide in, and can be easily sterilised.
Shit, make the whole case from a transparent polymer or glass and build a suitable UV source inside it and the device can be self-sterilising.
Capacitive buttons on the outside of the phone don't require an OS. More complex control circuitry than microswitches, for sure, but nothing that can't be made reliable enough for purpose (just as microswitches can be prone to failure if care isn't taken in their design.)
I've had a few phones or MP3 players suffer from dead microswitches over the years.
Ergonomically speaking, I'd take microswitches over capacitive soft keys - but that's a different issue.
The Sony Xperia Z phones had external charging pins, as did Moto Mod phones and the the old Nokias - much of the convenience of wireless charging, without the power efficiency issue (which is more of an issue for portable power banks than it is for mains charging). I guess wireless charging does have the advantage of interoperability between brands and models of phones.
'Mortality Rate' by convention, "is a measure of the number of deaths in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time."
So yeah, as you say, number over time.
No doubt the actual paper will have stated their units.
> All that is true, although one large difference is there aren't any multimillionaire prostitutes "donating" to our politicians.
Donations no, but said madams may have other forms of influence over MPs. That said, any wealthy prostitutes have, by definition, become wealthy under the current legislation, so don't have any financial reason to seek change (though they may of course have moral reasons to change the status quo).
And of course, successful madams or freelancers who service politicians aren't representing of the majority of sex workers.
> The one in a billion is an ideal conditions number that prosecutors use to bamboozle the technically illiterate.
Given the world's population of 7 billion plus change, if I'm accused based solely on 'one in a billion chance of it not being my DNA on the dagger', I'd say that actually means there's a 6/7ths chance it was somebody else.
'World-beating' was the term the UK government used for their mate's tracing app - the one that didn't work. It's a different beast to the one currently deployed, which is built atop a joint Google and Apple effort.
Still, for some reason the current app won't work without 'location' turned on, and since this canes my phone's battery, I usually have location turned off. This is daft, because the core of the Google Apple system is Bluetooth proximity based, generating and storing tokens - location isn't needed for this to work.
Sociologists refer to cultures such as Japan's as being 'tight' - rule-abiding, culturally homogenous, community focused. Such cultures correlate with - and are suited to dealing - external threats such as likelihood of natural disasters or belligerent neighbours. On the flip side, 'loose' cultures which are more individualistic and diverse can be drivers of economic drivers.
> Is there any proof that contact tracing apps are useful in whatever country they are deployed?
You shouldn't be be looking for 'proof', but for 'evidence that strongly suggests that...'. There are too many variables between countries for proof.
Technology-based contact tracing alone is not a silver bullet, but it can be a very useful part of a wider, coordinated contact tracing effort, an effort that includes more old-scool techniques such as knocking on doors and asking questions. See recent issues of Private Eye for what a balls-up the UKs wider contact tracing effort has been. The issue goes back about a decade and the cut in funding to local health authorities meaning the local knowledge isn't on hand.
Even without an app, mobile phones give good population-level data to epidemiologists and policy makers - such as: How many people flee Paris for the country after restrictions are announced.
The magician (and technology first adopter, friend of Silicon Valley types like Gates and Jobs) Penn Juliette was presented with a magic trick where the contestant had trained an artificial voice on hundreds of hours of Penn Juliette speaking (from TV shows and podcasts). After performing the trick, the contestant told Penn that for erhical reasons he would delete the artificial voice - unless Penn would like a copy for himself.
Penn pointed out that he was the only person on Earth who had zero conceivable use for an artificial voice that sounded like Penn Juliette.
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