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Comment DST and America, you guys crack me up (Score 2) 545

Americans seem to HATE the shit out of DST, why I don't know - it baffles me.
There's always these debates, every year same old arguments each time.

Fact is we lead mostly 9-5 lives. You can argue all you like that if I want more daylight, I should get up earlier and leave work earlier, that's never going to happen - life isn't going to change like that.
I love the shit out of DST, it's beautiful, every Melbournian I know loves it, in summer we get these awesome awesome long evenings of light, peoples moods are better, you can go out and so and enjoy stuff for hours. If you're fortunate enough to finish work around 4-ish you can really get a lot done in peak summer. It's cheery and it's great.

If anything, winter should be moved to DST too :/ I don't care if I'm going to work in the dark but coming home in the dark is gruesome and depressing.
As for the complexity of it, my PC's all do it automatically, my phone does it automatically, I need to change the time on my wristwatch, microwave and house clock. This is not a major issue.
3 DST

Comment OLED is the only answer now for us (Score 3, Insightful) 202

The marketing spin has been incredible, specifically over the last 5 years against plasma, somehow the entire "LED vs LCD" thing managed to paint the LED lit panels as the definitive display technology (those of us who understand colour depth, contrast, banding and just plain old "moving nicely" / refresh rate know this is simply not the case)

I managed to pick up earlier this year the second best display in the 2012 / 2013 (ST50) series, 65" - I love the thing, apparently the last Panasonic the ST60 has display lag, bad for gamers- however that could be unfounded and surprising for a plasma.

So for those of us that detest LCD screens (and that's mostly the plasma buyers and video enthusiasts) - we all best hope the OLEDs take off. I finally did some actual research for about 8 hours a few months back to get a better understanding of OLED and yeah ok, I finally get it. We've got a plasma and CRT killer here, finally (LCD and LED were never in the running) the blacks are incredible, the colour range is apparently larger / wider than what the high end digital video cameras can even capture for film, the refresh rate is in the tens or hundreds of thousands of times per second (?!) it's also the thinnest and it uses little power. Viewing angles astonomical, Burn in is a potential issue (slowly getting better) and overall display life is also a potential issue (again, slowly getting better)

We finally have one available to actually buy, in TV form (55" OLED in Korea is now on sale, a measly $10,000) - but considering it's a new tech, I'm actually surprised it's that cheap.
My guess is that in ... around 5 years, we'll see 70 / 80 / 90 / 100" OLED displays for about 2 to 6k$ - same old premium price for the big HDTV boys budget who can afford a new toy.
I do hope to see them on PC desks eventually too. LCD / LED movement is horribly grainy and nasty, I just can't deal with it.
(One more thing, I'd heard Panasonic was doing a joint research lab with someone to move to OLED? So perhaps their days as a premium display manufacturer are not over)

Either way, hope my Panasonic doesn't die for at least 3 or 4 years.

Comment Re:Kind of on topic (Score 2) 232

The phones are capable of shooting in portrait or landscape and auto-rotating the video.

One would assume when you start the recording process in a portrait state, you want to see it "normal".
Furthermore, how hard would it be for a camera app to display a small arrow on the display depicting where "up" is.

Finally, I don't care about rotating on the phone itself, rotating even on a PC isn't that simple either :/

Comment Kind of on topic (Score 4, Insightful) 232

For the love of all things holy, can camera software / smartphone software detect if the user has _initiated_ the recording rotated and adapt appropriately?
Alternatively, can we get some simple, easy software which rotates video easily? Pictures are a breeze, video seemingly not. It's 2013 already!

Comment Re:New Family, My Ass (Score 1) 188

When you say "a very long time" I assume you only mean a generation or two? because this tacky shit wasn't done by any of them a while back. Each model number in a 3xxx series was all based on the 3xxx tech or the 2xx or whatever. Now as you state the top end part in a series is new, the middle end parts in the new series are old.

It's deceptive.

Comment It deserves every sale it gets (Score 5, Insightful) 396

The game is incredible, if you're a fan of the GTA series, they've really addressed many issues with the game. The storyline is told better and more compelling than previous ones (that includes Gay Tony, which was quite good)

The graphics / environment / effects - god knows how they achieved this, I do not know. Yes some things like Uncharted look nicer but they are a very linear closed environment. For an open world game, it's utterly staggering. I'm playing on PS3 and the resolution seems higher than GTA4, there's more detail and there's more you can do AND the draw distance is further. The frame rate while not a flawless 30 all the time seems honestly better than GTAIV at most times.

The humour, satire, writing in general is utterly tip top. I am not cringing at lines or groaning at character decisions. As usual the commercials (billboard, radio, TV) are just fantastic, some of the random one liners amazing. The stuff they've added like the random mission encounters are awesome. I really can't complain about this at all in any way.
I'm about 35 hours into it (picked it up midnight Monday night) and about 2/3 of the way through it I'd say. It's just brilliant, it really is.
If you want to wait for the PC or oft wished for PS4 editions, go for it - but posting in reply here how inferior this is, pointless - the game is great, you can play it right now. If you want to complain that it's crap because "it doesn't do XYZ that Saints Row does" - good for you, hit up Saints Row!
This world blends together so many immersive things, it's just incredible. I love the shit out of this game.
$89 AUD? In hindsight I think I would've gladly paid $189 AUD. Just brilliant.

Comment Meaningless bullshit data. (Score 1) 61

We have bluecoat in my office and I frequently hit a link for generally something funny and get BLOCKED: ADULT CONTENT warnings. Fact is, in most workplaces EXCEEDINGLY few people are actually stupid enough to genuinely look at pornography on the computers, far more often it's a false match or an interesting interpretation of what constitutes "adult content"

This article isn't worth a damn but it will get your average person up in arms about those "scumbags in Parliament!!!"

Move along, nothing to see here.

Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 247

I've been using Android since 2.3 and I've got to tell you, the revisions per build are very small and simple to be honest. There's nothing to be excited about. Maybe if you come back every 12 months you might notice a difference but honestly, freaking out over 4.3 to 4.4 is pretty pointless.

I have a Galaxy S4, I love(d) Android and even with 2 fucking GB of memory, the goddamn OS isn't clever enough to prioritise a "primary" core application (my swype keyboard) to always be in ram. I click in a text field now and then and wait from 1/3 of a second to damn near 4 or 5 seconds at times.

Google / Android need to focus more on performance and less on features. I want a snappy, responsive and reliable phone. I've been defending Android online for years as 'pretty good' but I've been in for 3 years now, my phone has 4 cores, 2gb of ram. I really shouldn't have the keyboard taking up to 4 seconds to appear on the screen. Apple have got the end user experience right years ago.

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