* Posts by Stu

561 posts • joined 24 Apr 2007





We're with Exponential-E, our service didn't resume until the early hours of the following morning, roughly a 22 hour outage!

Nice to be high priority!

Hola HoloLens: Reg man gets face time with Microsoft's holographic headset


Re: Truely holographic?

This is the key thing for me, isn't what MS are peddling with all their snazzy mock-up vids, is rather what they're not showing us behind the scenes, like what display tech are they using, how they're scanning the 3D environment around them - saying it's Kinect based isn't really the whole picture, also what hardware it's made up of and how it'll ever finally fit into a pair of glasses, something they've really been glossing over!

Other journos have said they felt like the 3D objects are in fact reasonably well stuck to the real world, which is great, but I'm not seeing how Google seem only to be able to put up a semi-transparent image in the corner of your eye with Glass, but MS can do a full coverage 3D overlays onto the real world, having the ability to obscure your entire field of view!? Really!?

I'm reserving judgement until the dev kits come out.



I first saw this info on the BBC website

I read only the first five paragraphs before BOOM, they dropped this bombshell -

>However, it will work only with kit fitted with chips based on ARM's Cortex-M designs.

>That means that despite the Cambridge-based firm's stated aim of addressing "fragmentation" in the so->called "internet of things" (IoT) market, the code will not work on devices that use Intel's Quark and Atom >chips or Imagination's Mips processors.

Way to trumpet British innovation BBC! This is a total non-issue given the VAST majority of mobile devices out there use ARM chips. Who the hell uses Quark or Atom outside of the cheap-o Android tablet range, not to mention the entire embedded computer industry.

Thank you, el-reg, for not shitting on British innovation like the BBC seem to do regularly!

Guhhhh! The BBC get on my tits.

You know what today's movies need? More drones


Re: Parachutes

Can't speak for all the flight controllers, but the DJI Naza controllers stop in the sky, wait a bit for a re-connection before entering failsafe, then fly upwards a bit to 'attempt' to avoid obstacles, then in a straight line back to the initial point of GPS lock acquisition, then slowly descend, checking it's altimeter to see if it can land safely. It can't tell whether it'll fly laterally into an obstacle though.

Only trouble is that there's a chance you can run out of battery power as it returns, as it can take a good minute or two to complete the manoeuvre, and my hexacopter only averages around 12 mins flight time due to it's general weight - put a bigger battery on and you've offset the extra flight time in extra weight.

You can take it back out of failsafe though before it attempts to land as it flies back into radio range.

I'm actually quite intrigued by the idea of a parachute! I'm looking into it.

GAME ON: Top 10 tellies for a World Cup kicking


Re: 4K!?







That's right, nobody.

Scoff ye not: Chap carves crunchy carrot-copter


From what I could tell, this is an 'off the shelf' Hubsan X4 stripped down to the PCB, shoved in a carrot frame, and, to my amazement, still flew with those crappy one or two inch propellers! And was that super glue sticking the carrot bits together!? :-)


Next trick, buy the bits from the far east - custom flight controller, four electronic speed controllers, four brushless DC motors, a 3S battery, and four medium sized props. Reflash ESCs with SimonK firmware, upgrade flash on custom flight controller. Pop down to the market and get, I dunno, a few sticks of celery, make a somewhat more impressive veggie based flying machine.





If I may don my favourite tin-foil hat for a second...

What if they just SAID they struck a deal with SpaceX.

What if they just SAID it went into orbit and was due to release it's payload on May the fourth.

What if they just SAID the mission failed due to a convincing sounding issue with 'radiation'.

And what if they'd planned this all along and ran off with some major moolah.




So what about the 1000s of other apps....

...that are just as deceitful or outright pointless but don't get the press coverage? Still available.

In fact I'd bet Google know some are shit but still take their share of the dosh.

Literally the only reason this one got withdrawn is because it was highly rated and was publicised as being crapware.



Re: The Fuck Oculus?

Well I've pre-ordered DK2, and am thinking of cancelling, but I'm coming to realise that Facebook have injected a serious cash flow into Oculus, hence would have a lot more clout in the HW market to demand the screens and other tech they want - specifically it would benefit from curved OLED, Ultra resolution >1440p, very low latency, and very low persistence (see recent tech babble about Crystal Cove and DK2). Not only that they now have production scalability into the millions of units.


And what is the real price to us? How about just setting up a throw-away facebook account with absolutely no personal details on, sign-in to the nightmare of FB and get on with enjoying everything VR. That's my hope anyway.

Adverts, well if that happens then I'm out! Aside from this there's little else I could imagine FB doing to ruin the experience.


Still in future we might see the likes of a Dark-Alex type developer that almost single handedly blasted open the Playstation Portable, somebody could come along in a similar way and separate Facebook from the Rift.

Say CHEESE: Samsung files patent for transparent camera


Probably based off this tech -


The Reg's guide to cursing in Mongolian


Re: “female hygiene accessory”

Oh this is too perfect. Now we can bitch to each other using a standardised numbered table!

You're a 102 63 103, I'll 98 your 478, you 725 673.

Reg reader rattles tin for GoPro camera 'Stubilizer'


Re: It's another brushless gimbal.

Came here to say that - ^^^.

I bought a Brushless Gimbal to dangle a GoPro from the underside of my QuadCopter. I can get some sweet footage from a stabilised GoPro, you can even use a spare RC channel to control the camera angles.

A Brushless Gimbal uses the new generation of brushless DC motors arranged in and on two or more axes of a mounted camera (GoPro in this case), a microcontroller reads an IMU to determine how to keep it dead level, it's better than an RC servo driven gimbal because there's no twitching, no slow geared response, a brushless gimbal can very effectively cancel out quite violent rotational motion undesired in the final footage.

I sincerely hope he hasn't used the BGC AlexMOS firmware or somebody elses, at least without credit.

We test Intel's 730 480GB SSD Skulltrail scorcher


Is it technically overclocking...

...when it was done in-factory? Surely they're saying it can run at the higher rate 'naturally', not overclocked but just clocked faster because it's not being pushed harder than it was rated for?

Anyway, these aren't out apparently for another 14 days according to the Intel site.

Boffins devise world's HARDEST tongue-twister


Re: I'm not the pheasant plucker ...

It's pronounced nucular -


On the matter of shooting down Amazon delivery drones with shotguns


Re: Drones for delivery

I'd like to think it's possible, I own a medium sized quad myself, used primarily for aerial photography and screwing around in the sky.

Remember it's only been a few years since the advent of LiPo batteries that are capable of providing the many Amps needed for flight without melting, and maintain flight for, on average for me at least 15 mins with a reasonable load underneath (5000mah battery).

That makes a 7.5 minute fly out time, and the same in reverse. As for pushing my quad as fast as it'll go, that drains some more battery life, but I'm easily making around 30-40mph. I can't be arsed to do the maths, but that accounts for a pretty small area of effect TODAY, as for tomorrow with better battery technology, I don't see how it couldn't cover at least 15-20 miles. As always battery tech seems to be the limiting factor.

Plus I don't buy the whole, "no landing sites" argument. When I first tested my quad after fitting the GPS module I tried out a return-to-home operation. I cocked up and didn't know how to take it out of RTH failsafe mode, it guided its way through some tight fitting gaps and landed, realising obstacles in the way as it attempted to land, and that's with a simple altimeter, not a downfacing radar or anything sophisticated.

I reckon even with todays tech that a quad needs no more than about 6 square feet patch with line of sight to the sky, plus future brains can work out whether it's flat enough to land safely.

The benefits are easy to see, no traffic to sit in and add to, a relatively straight line route to your destination, you're pretty much guaranteed to be using an awful lot LESS energy than a hefty great delivery van, only hauling the smaller products, not to mention ultra quick delivery times.




Kudos for making the video have the feel (and audio) from an 80's BBC documentary about computing, what with the synth music!

I miss those old BBC classics!



Anybody remember when...

...buying a brand new games console would trounce any PC available at the time? And would be ahead of the game for around a year or so?

I worked out my current mid-to-high spec PC is already roughly 20-30% faster graphically than the PS4, and I bought it this summer.

Yes there's the cost difference, quite significant, but whatever happened to building seriously beefy systems at a marginal loss whilst selling games to make up the difference? I guess Sony realised they could get away with selling the consoles AND games at at profit from day one.

RETRO-GASM: The Fuze electronics kit for the Raspberry Pi


Oh this is such a good idea, well thought out.

If it were just a keyboard and breakout port, then it'd be so so.

The addition of a breadboarding kit in the top, inspired.

The inclusion of a pre-loaded SD card with a complete dev environment, genius!

To me this completes the Pi 'package'.

Shame it's a tad expensive all considered.



So we're at 2013 and...

...we're still talking the same old base OSes floating around, some decades old (not meaning to be derogatory), forked from other forks from other forks, but not a single one well enough developed and mature to be a proper contender to Linux or Windows?

To be anything other than the modern version of a 19th century (computer) science curioso that'll never make the popularity big-time.

Regardless of completeness though, these all seem to me to be slightly public exhibitions of up and coming computer scientists achievements, that all lack true depth and real interest, rather than real worthwhile alternatives.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say it'll never happen without a serious big-name company and millions in investment, not these nigh-on bedroom coding efforts, before anything beyond MS Windows or Linux lives on greater than 20% of home (even business) computers worldwide.

Man+iPhone versus artificial intelligence: Anki robot racer slot cars


If they could have instead...

...just made the cars into one of those line following type robots, albeit with a very wide line for the width of the track, and clever learning algorithms accumulating track knowledge lap after lap to learn 'racing lines', then us consumers could design any track instead of most likely having to pay out to the company for more track designs.


Plus my inner child is criticising this for the cars being seemingly quite slow - they should've taken a leaf out of the scalextric trick of having to speed up and slow down around bends.

GitHub wipes hand across bloodied face, stumbles from brutal DDoS beating


GitHub & businesses


Yes I'm sure the likes of Rockstar thoroughly entrusted a cloudy public hosting site to host the code for all it's GTA V developers. Or IBM developing an update to a SAN software stack?

Not a chance. Not even a small developer would trust it for private, internal code. Sure for sharing code around publically, but not businesses big and small, just use something like Atlassian Stash on-premises or whatever, or, shock horror, GIT itself on a linux box.



Re: Intel didn't seem to know what they were building


Chances are it claims 2 to 3A when it begins doing some serious number crunching, relatively speaking.

It may idle at 2.5w or whatever, but throw some work at it and BOOM.



Current iPad Mini

I own an iPad Mini, and I'm no fanboi, I'm happy to lambast Apple products if they don't meet up to the standards of Apple products and innovation hype (*COUGH* iPhone 5S). However the current Mini, as far as I'm concerned, isn't bad at all with it's non-retina screen - it really isn't worth the upgrade to this supposed new retina model.

Sure 1024x768 seems pretty crappy, as it was on the full size iPad, however it's squeezed into a smaller footprint, and kind of works well at that DPI. In all honesty my eyes can't really discern a significant difference, although I can tell the difference between it and my SGS4 1080p screen, it's far from a showstopper and isn't a disappointment, text still looks really smooth and images crisp and colourful.

Put it this way, when Sammy squeezed 2 million pixels into my SGS4, this is the whole miniaturisation thing going a little too far.

Only young fresh eyes can probably tell the difference. As for this whole pixel miniaturisation thing, its a great idea up to a point. Ask yourselves this question - Can you look at a 1080p movie on any of the permier 1080p phones and see the same level of detail as on a blu-ray on your telly. I doubt it.

I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future


The Roddenberry dream

Ahh the good old Roddenberry vision of the future. No poverty, no need for currency, throughout the world. Trading of commodities and services taking place between alien races. It's presumed all the menial labour and all production is done by automation (and replication) whilst everybody else goes out and explores the galaxy in starships.

Well he didn't say quite how it transitioned to this way of operation, save perhaps for world war 3 upending everything.

As far as I'm concerned, the super rich and powerful today aren't going to give that life up for equality for all, and they've got all the lobbying power and have the ear (and pocket) of the politician to prevent this particular dream from happening. Besides our current leader, isn't he a multi-millionaire too?

Besides, you can't entrust a community Bugatti Veyron to your average essex chav for the weekend can you.

Chap unrolls 'USB condom' to protect against viruses


a go-between?

If it were me I would have designed a board with a small USB capable microcontroller that could have negotiated a higher amperage from the supply than 100ma,. and acted as a go-between the port and the smartphone thereby protecting from malware infection but still charging a smart device the other side.

It would have to be a very specialised piece of malware to infect a microcontroller USB stack and wouldn't get them very far if they went to the effort.



Cosmetics logo anyone!?

I think it might be Clinique. Looks awfully similar!

Hardly surprising from a WOMAN! </controversial>



Android IP Webcam

Awesome freebie Android app, not quite the same as this iPhone thing, no motion detection, but has a few other cool features such as very high quality video streaming, custom image quality and frame rate, a variety of web based video stream options including Java, JavaScript, VLC, etc so you can use it with most browsers, as opposed to hard-coded to an iPhone app...

Xbox 180: Microsoft scraps mandatory Kinect policy


Don't worry.

They'll sneak this and the always-connected feature into the next iteration of XBox, or if we're extra lucky, into a firmware update a year on.

That's how the conservatives magicked poll-tax into council-tax don't you know.

Dubya: I introduced PRISM and I think it's pretty swell


I'm still having trouble understanding...

...quite how somebody would do this and yet not already have a plan and agreements in place of where to go for the rest of his life.

Not for a minute did he seem to think that he might get stuck in an airport in Russia, probably awaiting a CIA assassination?

I suspect he might have been tricked into revealing his secrets by the ever moral, upstanding, and vigilant world press. Harr-dee-harr. Now left to fend for his-self stuck betwixt and between nations.

MSX: The Japanese are coming! The Japanese are coming!


This article would have been...

...so much more 'palatable' had it been on one page rather than six.

Just sayin'.

Still, rather good, it was.

Asus FonePad: You may feel a bit of a spanner


Re: Does anyone make a bluetooth handset?

Can't quite tell if you're joking or not! Surely the point of this device is to eliminate the need to carry around any devices sub 5 inches, aka smartphones, dumbphones, general plastic lumps.


I do, however, get where you're coming from, as you'll never catch me walking around outside with a BT headset dangling from my ear, kind of like how a million fat builders and taxi drivers do.


As for the 6310i form factor, I was thinking perhaps WAY thinner, something clamshell designed, that is as unobtrusive in the pocket as a piece of corrugated cardboard.

BadNews, fandroids: MILLIONS of Google Play downloads riddled with malware


Re: Android permissions design

Well isn't that just because Apple stop people from being able to fully utilise YOUR device that apps aren't allowed to access phone numbers, IMEI numbers, contact info, etc?

I don't remember ever seeing an iPhone app being able to dial numbers for you, but then I haven't owned an iPhone in years.


Android permissions design

Always seemed to me the whole Android permissions system is very under-granularised.

"Read Phone Status and Identity" presents the app with info such as whether somebody is on a call, but also their complete phone number and IMEI number. Combined with Internet Access permission, allows complete silent transmission of your phone number and name to black market phone number lists.

"Make phone calls" An app can legitimately call a number for you. On the other hand it can do it without your permission to a premium rate number, completely automatically, say at 3am.

"Read contact data" allows an app to show you your contacts for something within the app legitimately, or just allows more black market sellable names and phone numbers.

The list goes on and on.

If I was a really suspicious person I might think Google made them this under-granular on purpose. More and more apps are doing the whole "Read phone status & ID" thing by default now.

Up your wormhole: Star Trek Deep Space 9 turns 20


Re: Curate's egg?

DS9 was a top Sci-Fi, started off feeling like it's not really the trek that I loved at the beginning, but got me thru Uni. in the end!

Yep, agreed. Vic was a holodeck character with too great a part in the last few seasons, but it went utterly ridiculous when he turned up in flesh and blood in the alternate universe! The writers needed shooting for that one.

Vedek/Kai Winn totally pissed me off because of her incessant corrupt power-hungry twisting nature, with her whiney little voice, it made me feel ill inside.

On forethough I suppose the actress pulled it off pretty well then to piss me off so much!

Aside from that, and the somewhat annoying squeaky Ferengi voices of the Grand Nagis, the dumb put on voice of Quarks brother, that and all the Ferengi heavy episodes, DS9 was fantastic.

Voyager sucked in relation to DS9, it started off pretty well, with a well constructed initial series, I loved the pilot two-parter, but then seemed to suffer a bit from the Y2K transition in TV drama in general.


Indeed he is, but did you know...

Andrew Robinson (Scorpio from Dirty Harry) has a daughter who featured in a pretty turgid episode where Jake ends up witnessing some accident on the Defiant where his father disappears before his eyes, and lives his entire life missing his father just that bit too much.

She was a right hottie! Oh and I suppose she acted in it pretty well too...



Re: A reasonable priceplan

Indeed. If we all think back, 4G was meant to be the 'fix' that mobile operators were hoping for to be able to support many more simultaneous users. By setting a 500MB limit, they're admitting that it's a lie.


Yet again

40Mbps, nice, won't stay like that for long though.

Seems to me if everybody moves over to 4G then 3G might actually be quite useable for the few left on it - kind of like how sometimes GPRS can be faster than 3G when there are tons of people on 3G.

Latest PS3 hack hits Sony with massive migraine



Not a chance, have you been paying attention to the levels of disdain and utter contempt Sony has for it's paying customer base over the years? Not to mention it's VERY poor OS and general software writing skills (true-multitasking anyone?).

My PS3 is now only a Blu-Ray player to me. As soon as it conks out I'm buying a (non-Sony) dedicated player.

Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle?

Thumb Down

The most annoying fact here

All this seems to have come about for the sole reason that the iPad and others are doing pretty well right now.

MS have adopted it full steam ahead, thereby ignoring, nay, shitting on, the many software development investments (billions of dollars worth) from nearly two decades ago, in a single stroke devaluing probably the best and most important reason in the world to buy Windows - backwards compatibility.

Metro is apparently the vomit inducing way forward, it's like sod the past and PAY ME.

What with all the problems with modern society, MS really don't need to add to it by dumbing down and psychedelic re-colouring everything - don't get me wrong, I'm all for ease of use and the tablet form-factor, but most certainly not at the expense of the power that a full Windows app might have had prior to it being Metro-ised.

This just ain't not right I tells ya!


P.S. Have you ever tried to use Windows 8 RTM in a windowed Hyper-V console? I have, it's an utter joke even trying to get to the top level menus.

Samsung slaps swift patch over phone-wiping Galaxy S III vuln


Re: Not a (just) Touchwiz problem

So you're also at the mercy of the CyanogenMod Developers et al, hope they didn't plant a back door, or contacts / web / email snatching malware or anything like that in CyanogenMod!

I know so many ppl use it, but I wouldn't be so trusting of 3rd party Android images at all.

I've actually been stung before with an XDA Developers provided image for an old Windows Mobile 6 phone. The phone kept chucking up really weird errors suggesting attempts at dialing numbers! With Android apparently this can be done 'more' silently nowadays, so no, wouldn't touch 3rd party firmware with a barge pole.



£15 - 25

They're taking the smeg, it's over 20 years old and I already paid £30 for it (was it?) back then for my Atari ST!

Guh, it's like the DVD to Blu-Ray tax.

Apple slip-up slows iOS 6 upgrades



Steve would never let this happen if he were still around.

This, Maps and Youtube (having to revert to an iPhone app to watch YT vids) are all signs that Apple is flagging without it's 'illustrious' deceased leader.

Not that they were ever really good on the software side of things.

Nvidia puts Tesla K20 GPU coprocessor through its paces


So let me get this straight....

If I'm using Blender with this baby installed and enable the cycles renderer (CUDA enabled) in GPU+CPU mode in real time, it's going to render like the proverbial waste material off a shovel?

Anyone know how much this beast will cost? 10k+?



Re: Reg Fanbois are twisting in the wind of iPhone success

Heh heh heh!

Boy, did that Apple fanboi nut step into the wrong community!

Its fair to say especially with Apple's recent keynote, I'll not own another iPhone for the foreseeable future (Android serves me well for now) and NEVER a Macintosh or MacBook, just not for me.

However I love my iPad 3 what with its lovely screen and super silky UI (mostly). Nobody can deny it's great for what it's been designed to actually do.

So why does it seem that nobody seems able to just pick out the kit they find great, from whatever vendor, be brutally honest with themselves about it, ensuring you dont suffer from brand bigotry, MS fanbois included, and enjoy it!?

Lets face it, they're only different branded products serving a whole variety of tastes, they all pretty much do the same thing in different ways! You owe it to yourselves to enjoy what you find great about the devices without unfounded prejudice or some vapid sense of fashion for one or another brand.

Try out EVERYTHING, if YOU don't like it, fair enuff but don't fall into any brand 'camp' like everybody seems to nowadays.

Basically, get over it!

Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin


Re: Everyone must have seen this by now, surely -

Oh and a floaty metal ball is!? Or giving it a chance at least - is a floaty metal ball a better solution than the Leap?

I'm not going to justify the Leap controller to someboy who's too stupid or ig'nant to see its potential, I'm also not going to 'big-up' the controller, or blow it out of all proportion like some might try to do.

Suffice it to say, out of all the lame assed conceptual non-products demoed in this article, the Leap is actually being marketed, soon. And doesn't look like some strange control device you might find in Barbarella or any weird 60s sci-fi.


Everyone must have seen this by now, surely -


Perfect for not actually having to touch anything, exremely precise and lag free.

Initially looked a bit fishy to me, but now it's been demoed in 'the real world' so to speak, pretty effectively -


Oh and the other thing, unlike all those demoed in the article, the leap controller looks like it might actually make it to an actual product come the new year.

Brits spent £334 each year on games



...you're right about the games sucking more and more on the Wii, but in general console history, games did used to (do?) keep getting better as years went on, as more was learned about the machine capabilities by the developers. Not to mention how to squeeze more content into essentially limited storage media.

I think this is fair to say about both XBox's, and so far about all the Playstations too. Probably a bit different on Ninty's consoles because they never strove for highest quality visuals and audio.

Citation - Call of Duty 3 was an early PS3 title, as was Resistance FoM, Check out ye olde YT footage of them and compare against all the newer titles, what with their much improved character animations, pixel shader effects, 1080p, etc.

Sony slams Nintendo Wii U functionality


£PS3 + £VITA > £WiiU too.


Cos lets face it, the WiiU isn't going to be a graphical powerhouse if its predecessors are anything to go by.

In fact dare I put forward the proposition -


£PS3 + £PSP > £WiiU?

Crytek says future is free-to-play


Another trick...

...to earn cash is to have places in games that are formidably difficult to pass without shelling out real money, not so you can afford the gear needed to defeat the 'stage', but just so it becomes doable at all!

Don't do that Crytek, it makes me want to Cry-tek. (bad'm tsh).


There is a game (Amongst thousands of others) on the iPad that I'm pretty sure does this very thing right at the last level of the game, called Hunters 2.

You can bash away at the 'end of game baddie' with a variety of weapons till he gets down to a point, then every hit you make only causes a miniscule amount of damage no matter what you use. I would bet a weeks wages you have to purchase some credits, then he becomes beatable.

So whilst all this pay-per-play stuff on the surface all seems a great idea, most of the ideas companies have come up with to rake in cash actually sucks donkey balls.



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