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Comment Re:It looks fantastic! (Score 2) 616

by EdZ (#44940517) Attached to: Why Is Microsoft Setting More Money On Fire With Surface 2?
There's nothing stopping you from putting Linux on the x86 Surfaces. The ,a href="http://www.geek.com/microsoft/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-the-surface-pro-1539262/">first guide that turned up on googling 'Linux surface' had this to say on how to enable Linux on the Surface:

swipe your Charm Bar in from the side and tap the Settings icon. You’ll need to tap the Change PC Settings at the bottom of the Settings sidebar. From the Settings panel under General you can choose to boot into Advanced Startup. Once your computer boots into the all blue menu with the large touch friendly icons, you’ll need to tap Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings.

This will reboot your Surface and take you to an all black screen with two options on it, Security Device Support and Secure Boot Control. Tap the space next to Secure Boot Control that is currently labeled [Enabled] and a menu will pop up prompting you to change it to [Disabled]. Once the menu reflects the correct setting you can tap Exit Setup and the Surface will reboot. You can also reach this menu if you hold down the Volume Up key on the Surface Pro while booting.

Once Secure Boot is disabled, you will be able to install anything, regardless of whether or not it is signed. Disabling doesn’t have any other effect on your Surface Pro, and Windows 8 won’t behave any differently when you reboot the Surface.

From there on, it;s a typical installation from USB.

Comment Can. But shouldn't (Score 5, Informative) 171

by EdZ (#44919409) Attached to: Xbox One's HDMI Pass-Through Can Connect PS4, PCs and More
It was later clarified by Penello that the latency of the HMDI input would be too high for gaming, and using it to pass the PS4's (or any other console, e.g. 360) output is not recommended, presumably because of the overlay. Odd, as my AV receiver can overlay it's UI with no more than 1 frame of delay, but if it was only intended for overlaying of TV, then MS may never have bothered to optimise it.

Comment Re:Too little too late (Score 3, Informative) 496

by EdZ (#44669797) Attached to: Windows 8.1 RTM Trickling Out, With Start Menu and Boot-to-Desktop
The 'minimum effort' way to access programs, control panel snap-ins, etc hasn't changed since Vista: press the start key on your keyboard, type the first, occasionally second (and possibly third, for lesser-used programs) characters of the name, then hit enter. If you using the hunt-around-some-menus technique you might experience a slight speed-up or slow-down when going from start menu to start screen, depending on how organised you are (or how resistant to change you are), but for anyone using windows in a sane manner the difference is nonexistant.

Comment Re:A good idea with one condition (Score 1) 223

by EdZ (#44603189) Attached to: Should Cops Wear Google Glass?
Great in theory. How do you deal with bathroom breaks, and any sort of sensitive information (e.g. viewing case records, either on a computer or physical documents) that whoever may be viewing the video should not have access to, talking with at-risk witnesses (who may feel threatened and not give information at all if they feel their identities may become known), or even just talking to the general public in the comfort of their own homes (i.e. 'neighbourhood policing')?
I'm all for issuing every police officer with a camera, and the technology is easily there to do so with an almost cast-iron signing chain to ensure the footage is demonstrably tamper-free, but the logistics of doing so is not quite as easy as "hand 'em out, never turn 'em off".

Comment Re:If you program it correctly (Score 1) 68

by EdZ (#44601337) Attached to: Colorado Teen Designs Robotic Arm With 3D Printing
Yes. And additionally, he's looking to use a paltry 10-channel EEG to do it. That may be enough for someone with good (and conscious) concentration to move one axis back and wards, and maybe even switch between axes. But moving the arm unconsciously and naturally? No way. Not even close. For that, you need some sort of nerve reinnervation, direct patch-clamping of the motor neurons, or an intercranial BMI (Brain Machine Interface) right in the motor cortex. Or you could sit inside a noninvasive MEG (Magnetoenchphalogram) machine, but those aren't exactly portable.

Comment Re:Space Elevator (Score 1) 82

by EdZ (#44589311) Attached to: Carbyne: a Form of Carbon Even Stronger Than Graphene
An straight-up Space Elevator is still way beyond us, even if we could pump out molecularly perfect nanotubes of indefinite length. But smaller tether systems are totally possible; 'stationary' and hypersonic Bolos and Skyhooks, depending on the orbital velocity and tip velocity (itself depending on tether length and rotation rate). You don't need a massive anchor site, you could fly some of the smaller ones in a single launch, and we could make some of the smaller ones with materials we already manufacture in bulk (e.g. Spectra and other tensile Aramids).

Then there are just fun things you can do, like conductive tether generators and propulsion inside a magnetosphere, or linear tether launchers.

Comment Re:TPM is all you need. (Score 1) 100

by EdZ (#44466929) Attached to: Researchers Demo Exploits Bypassing UEFI Secure Boot

What is the killer feature of Windows 8, the one everyone wants?

Smaller memory footprint, generally faster, many CPU optimisations to take into account newer silicon (e.g. being able to switch off unused cores predictably, assigning threads in a sane manner, etc), much better file copy and task manager interface, removing aero in favour of a cleaner UI style, etc.
There's no single big flashy feature added, but there are a lot of nice improvements to Win7. Any for anyone other than those who hunt around the start menu with a mouse rather than using the type-to-run function that's been there since Vista, it takes all of 10 minutes to get used to (or to install a start-menu replacement for the luddites).

Comment Re:The video doesn't sell it well (Score 1) 86

by EdZ (#44466895) Attached to: Woz & Jobs 2.0: Leap Motion's Holtz & Buckwald
Waving my hands about with NO HAPTIC FEEDBACK is not in any way immersive for me. It doesn't matter how many tracking points you have, how fast the update rate is, or how wide a range of motions you can track. Whole-body non-haptic tracking will lose out to the most basic two-point haptic setup when it comes to actually experiencing an environment.

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