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Comment Re:Copyright (Score 2) 100

Nintendo doesn't make money anymore with that specific game.

Yes they do. You can buy it right now on the Wii-U. We bought it for the Wii a few years ago. Nintendo have re-released a lot of their franchised greats over and over again on each new console. Heck they only released the SuperMario collections a few years ago with all the old classic games, ON A DISC. Not even a generic Nintendo store download, but a disc sold in the store with games remade to work on new consoles.

Comment Re:downgrading cpu to make battery numbers look be (Score 1) 128

All the Surfaces had ARM based processors. The Atom is a nice step up in comparison.

All the Surface Pros had Intel i5s and up, and they still do.

In either case battery life has not been a source of complaints, and even with the Pro 3's i5 which is the same as the Pro 2's the battery easily lasts 8 hours or so.

Comment Re:2GB More Than Enough With Windows 8.1 (Score 0, Troll) 128

As much as I hate Windows 8.1, one thing they have done right is greatly reduced the memory load.

Windows Vista 64-bit took about 2GB RAM, you basically had to have 3GB+ to run anything.

Windows 7 64-bit took about 1GB RAM, or practical tests 0.8GB, you basically had to have 2GB+ to run anything.

Windows 8/8.1 takes a whole 0.28GB RAM, you basically need 1GB+ to run anything.

The Surface 3 is made for word processing, browsing the web, watching video, taking notes, or simpler tasks like that. 2GB will work well for this role.

Sorry but I can't agree. I've never seen Windows 8.1 EVER run with that low of a memory load, and that's the first thing I checked when I bought a Surface Pro 3 fresh out of the box because I was worried that 4GB wasn't going to be enough. Admittedly I do photography which is why I was worried about 4GB, and really I was right. It is a battle to get any software to provision more than 2GB of memory. Windows 8.1 booted up out of the box consuming just over 1GB. These days it boots to about 1.5GB with Chrome, Dropbox, and generic odds and ends installed. Firing up word, opening a 3 page document, and having Outlook open at the same time will consume around about 500MB of RAM by itself.

So no. I do not agree that 2GB is enough on a modern system. I do not agree that 2GB is enough on a modern system that only runs Office, let alone one that will have Onenote and other things open in the background.

I love the Surface 3 Pro. It's been a real pleasure to use since I bought it and would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with enough budget and the desire to have one device act as a tablet and a laptop. But I won't EVER suggest to anyone these days that they can get away with a full Windows PC that only has 2GB of RAM.

Comment Re:Way to piss off customers, Apple. (Score 1) 193

Ok let's assume that both watches have zero features. Because they do. I can ask anyone what the time is, and if I'm in range of my phone from my watch I could pick up the phone.

Now the argument is:

Would you spend $800 on something that last 13+ years with no maintenance. Or would you spend $500 on something that last 3 years and then needs to be replaced?

Now the argument would be if you follow this train of thought then the smartwatch with a flat battery which is unable to sync to the phone is still the same fashion accessory, except then you have the broken watch problem. If you don't have a watch and you ask someone the time everything is okay. If your watch breaks and you ask someone the time you get strange looks. If people know you run around wearing a broken watch they just think you're an absolute twat. Mind you that could be a fashion statement all in itself.

Point is the value proposition for things we put on our arms are nothing to do with features but they are to do with design, manufacture quality, and longevity, and the smartwatches in general really fail on that last part.

Comment Re:This is how you destroy your product. (Score 1) 92

Oh I agree. They should die in a fire, but my point is that the ecosystem is out of their control. If they disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't change that Arduino is used and works on thousands of clones, copies, and even in some legit products which have been loaded with their bootloader.

I'm speaking back against the assertion that Arduino SRL's actions in some way make the Arduino ecosystem not worth the trouble. They could run around tomorrow and start killing babies, but the system itself will still work the same way it did yesterday.

Comment Re:Way to piss off customers, Apple. (Score 1) 193

Exactly. My $800 watch has lasted for about 13 years. It's on it's 3rd battery. My dad's Rolex is about 35 years old now, it doesn't even have a battery.

I may be able to justify a nice looking smart watch if and only if it had some way of extending it's life as a fashion accessory, otherwise it is just a dumb device that duplicates all functionality I already have in my pocket except on my hand.

Fashion accessories should not wear out, suffer from EOL problems due to irreplaceable batteries, or not work with future devices, especially if they are expensive fashion accessories.

Comment Re:Way to piss off customers, Apple. (Score 1) 193

This! For the Australian launch of the iPad 3 there were people queued for the entire day at the Apple store. My friend ducked out of work at lunch time went down to JB HiFi picked up his iToy, grabbed lunch and was back at his desk before anyone noticed.

It's like people think the Apple store is the only place to actually buy Apple stuff.

Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

The root cause here is that a person was mentally unstable and murdered everyone.

The root cause was NOT that the pilot may have done it while imitating the co-pilot.

Remember we're talking about airline safety, not about person blame. A root cause must always identify the underlying process cause of the incident, and is not designed to lay blame on a specific person since person and human behaviors are transient.

So would the 150+ people be any less dead if it was the primary pilot who did it? Or the stewardess?

Comment Re:Arduino? Good riddance! (Score 1) 92

The website bit, and more importantly the second part involving active forum members willing to help.

All platforms have their social issues, but from what I've seen the mbed platform does not rank highly in my humble opinion on community support. Certainly not as highly as Arduino or to a lesser extent the AVR community who can also be a right royal bunch of twats to newcommers at times.

Comment Re:Fukushima and Chernobyl not worse case failures (Score 1) 227

Oh I agree, the problem is the upgrade part. You can add seatbelts to a car (better shutdown system to your reactor), but you can't add crumple zones (inherently safer design). There's only so much sugar coating you can put on an old dried turd before you realise that underneath it all there is still something leaving a foul taste in your mouth.

The modern world is about inherently safer design. Not just nuclear, but chemical and industrial too. We rely less on safety systems instead opting to run at lower pressures, lower temperatures, with less dangerous materials, just like modern nuclear reactors do with different void co-efficients, passive cooling systems, etc.

You can't upgrade to that. You can just shut down and rebuilt, and fundamentally the problem has been a lack of new plants means the old ones which do have approval get bandaid after bandaid applied rather than the sensible thing of shutting it down and building a new reactor along side, or better still further away from populations.

Comment Re:Fukushima and Chernobyl not worse case failures (Score 1) 227

That's your sphere of comprehension. Chemical plants like refineries are every bit as scary when you know how they operate. Imagine a container with 80t of hydroflouric acid, which instantly evaporates to vapour on loss of containment and can quite easily kill people with low concentrations. Sounds scary but I just described many SMALL refineries often within only a couple of km of major population centres, closer than any reasonable person would every build a nuclear power plant. I also suggest looking up Bhopal disaster. It won't make you any less scared of nuclear, but it may just make you give up and go live in the forest somewhere.

I won't say nuclear is unfairly vilified, but rather we unfairly give everything else a free pass when the reality is really REALLY bloody scary.

Comment Re:I don't get why there needs to be anything to b (Score 1) 58

Not blocking the link, but blocking the initial distribution. Yes it would be far harder but it's no more difficult than the current state of blocking where you can go onto Google, type in (insert fav torrent site here) and get a list of which domain it happens to be running on today. The only difference is you're looking for the magnet link which will bounce around as the power that be continue their futile attempts to block content one web address at a time.

Comment Trace resistance (Score 3, Informative) 33

One of the biggest problems with these systems is the trace resistance. Silver ink has in every case so far been orders of magnitude higher in resistance than a small copper trace effectively making these systems useless for anything that carries power. I'm not talking about big power either, simply powering several micros, a few logic chips and a couple of relays on a circuit is enough to bring the current up that you can't just run everything in the same trace.

I predict lots of people will set fire to their projects.

Comment Re:Without the software, Arduino is not interestin (Score 3, Insightful) 92

No, it's the entire environment that does that. The point of the Arduino is that any idiot can grab %insert Arduino model here% and attach %insert shield here%, go and download %insert library here% and then plug it all in and turn it on.

I have friends who have never programmed before using Arduinos for all sorts of neat things, controlling lights via PWM, monitoring environments etc. None of them would have achieved what they have if they had to dig through datasheets, understand the differences between voltages, signals, figure out how to communicate via I2S, or god forbid solder something (I'm sure most of them would have grabbed the iron like a pencil).

Arduino exists as it does because of all the little conveniences it provides.

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