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Comment Re:How about (Score 2) 285

Not just tasty in their own right, but also not be so hot that you kill any chance of really enjoying the taste of whatever else that you are eating them with/in. I can manage peppers a fair way up the scale; a hot Piri Piri sauce doesn't bother me much, nor do habaneros, which are both around the 50-100K bracket IIRC, but all I can taste after a few mouthfuls is the pepper. I'd much rather have something like jalapeños or something even lower on the scale, so I can taste both the pepper and the rest of the meal for the entire sitting.

Comment Re:Little disturbing (Score 3, Insightful) 491

Inmarsat managed to eliminate the northen arc based on differences in expected doppler differences of the signal pings, when the last ping was received, and assuming a conservative fuel consumption to that point, there would have been insufficient fuel left for the plane to make land, hence it went down in the ocean. It's important to note that Inmarsat is unable to say where exactly, only that it is within a given range of the location where last known ping was now known to have been sent from, which is where the search for wreckage is now centred. I gather this is the result of a highly unorthodox set of data analysis that is well outside normal procedures for determining location, hence the reason it's taken so long - some of the techniques they used probably haven't ever been done before.

Comment Re:Flight recorder (Score 4, Insightful) 491

Still vastly better than what it was only a day ago, and there seems to be a lot more possible debris sightings in the search area which I take as a sign they might be in the right area and will hopefully pin it down some more. The race now is to find it before the black box transmitters go silent, a task for which the US is dispatching some specialist search gear apparently, because that's probably the only hope of giving the bereaved a chance at some closure left now.

Comment Re:I think this is dangerous (Score 1) 100

I don't think it's going to be quite the VR nirvana that some people are expecting, at least not for some of the more involved games that would benefit the most from VR - simpler console based stuff will be fine, although I'd expect there to be a similar level of bandwagon jumping crap that we had when the first "Multimedia PCs" were all the rage. Having a device like the Oculus Rift strapped in front of your eyes is a double edged sword; yes, you are totally immersed in the virtual environment, but you are also much more limited in your interactions with the real one. You are going to need to have situational awareness of both worlds, and do everything in the real one pretty much by touch alone, and that's likely a more limiting factor than some people might be expecting.

There's a lot of people planning on using the Oculus to play Star Citizen when it comes out, yet this is a traditional old school style PC flight sim at heart which, as many old timers will attest, even with all the buttons and other controls on a HOTAS setup, you often still needed some controls on the keyboard. The game also has an FPS mode that many of those same players are planning on using with a mouse rather than a stick, so that most likely means that the left hand will be moving between throttle and keyboard and the right between stick and mouse. Sure, most PC gamers can touch type, but with the Oculus we won't even have the benefit of our peripheral vision to find the home keys and get our bearings to find the key(s) we want, and I think that might be harder to do quickly than some people expect, particularly when they are in the middle of a dogfight or attempted boarding. That's not to say it's an unsolvable problem, some extra thought on control to key mappings might be enough to avoid most mis-steps, and I expect to see a lot of work going into making input devices much more tactile to help with this over the next few years - braille keyboards for hardcore VR gamers anyone?

Comment Re:If you believe in full disclosure (Score 5, Insightful) 162

Perhaps. By not applying Full Disclosure to the identity of the "insider" that has resulting in this you could accuse John Cartright of breaching his and the list's principles, but without knowing the details of the threat (and the list has resistant many such threats in the past) it's difficult to know what the consequence of that might be. Or maybe there is no really significant threat other than some inconvenience, but this is just the straw that broke the camel's back. If not taking down this list would result in the breach of a court order, then this is almost certainly the right tack to take, regardless of how painful it might seem, unless we are expecting John to potentially become another fugitive from justice, like Edward Snowden?

Sure,it's a sad day for freedom of information, and will no doubt have negative consequences due to more information being known only those with malicious intentions and companies sweeping issues under the rug due to lack of exposure, but even so I don't think it's ont that is worth compromising your life over, let alone expecting someone else to do so.

Submission + - UK Shopping Centre Launches First Bluetooth Beacon Mobile Loyalty Technology (ibtimes.co.uk)

concertina226 writes: The Swan Centre in Eastleigh becomes first UK shopping centre to launch Bluetooth-based beacon technology to connect retailers directly with consumers through their smartphones.

From today shoppers entering the Swan Centre will be able to receive offers and discounts directly on their smartphones from retailers throughout the shopping centre — as long as they download a SmartRewards app first.

As they wander through the shopping centre, tiny devices called TagBeacons send targeted ads and discounts directly to their smartphones using low-energy Bluetooth technology, which enables information to be sent to devices that are up to 50 metres away.

Over time, as the data collected builds up, users will begin to receive more targeted offers, and there will also be the option for retailers and shopping centres to monitor customer behaviour.

Submission + - Could EU's Ruling on Common Charger Standard Force Apple to Change iPhone? (ibtimes.co.uk)

DavidGilbert99 writes: MEPs in the European Parliament have passed legislation which will force smartphone and tablet manufacturers to conform to using a single type of charger by 2017. And as this is likely to be the microUSB standard, it could signal the end of Apple's use of its proprietary 30-pin and lightning connectors on its iPhone, iPad and iPods. But will Apple change or will it just give customers an adaptor?

Submission + - Spain's Government Limits Crowdfunding (euroweeklynews.com)

Eric Eikrem writes: As crowdfunding is threatening to crowd out traditional banks, the Spanish government has taken steps to protect their friends in the large Spanish banks. It plans to restrict total funding to €1 million per project and iIndividual contributions will be limited to €3,000, with a €6,000 cap on the amount donated to the same platform.

These haphazard limits are introduced at a time when banks offer practically no financing to SMEs and startups. Getting a startup off the ground in Spain has never been easy and these steps will make it even worse, but the Spanish government seems to be willing to do whatever it takes to protect their friends, consistently looking out for the interests of a very few well-connected persons.

Comment Re:changed my view of it for the better (Score 1) 192

It's not negative, the older generation is just more jaded and has seen too many things like this turn into a fad to risk any significant amount of tangible worth on it. There is also the risk of association given the close links between BC and the digital underworld to consider, particularly when dealing with laypersons (many of whom might be in senior management); "You use Bit Coin? Isn't that used to buy drugs and stuff?" It's not some toy like a new programming language, Seti@Home, or an Arduino that you can hack around with and the only real risk is a bit of time and CPU cycles; you've got to put actual money on the line, and quite a bit of it if you want to mine productively. Those "flaws and nitpicks" that you mention are resulting in far too much of that money getting ganked, although admittedly, that's often the fault of the original owner failing to do their homework and making a silly mistake like trusting their BC to a third party that isn't deserving of that trust.

In my view, crypto currencies are still at v1.0, and we all should know the rule about ".0" releases, let alone "1.0" releases. As such, I find that it's an interesting notion but almost certainly doomed to be replaced by something new and improved once all the teething troubles and peripheral issues that we are currently seeing get addressed. I'm not really expecting the tech masses (including the jaded grey beards) to really embrace it until we start seeing the next generation of currencies and have some kind of framework in place to prevent most of those "flaws and nitpicks" without having to RTFM. Any possible mainstream public acceptance is probably only going to come once there are far more legitimate uses than illegitimate ones and it's generally seen as a safe and convenient thing to do, even for a complete n00b that's likely to click on a link to a file called "rootkit.exe", cancel the AV warnings and run it anyway.

Submission + - Russia Blocks Internet Sites Of Putin Critics (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Reuters reports, "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it "monstrous" and a "direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,"..." — More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post , and Deutsche Welle, which notes, "This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the " Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes."

Submission + - Microsoft Dumping License Fees for Windows Phone? (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: For years, Microsoft remained adamant about its licensing fees for Windows Phone: if a smartphone manufacturer wanted to include the software on its devices, it would need to pay Microsoft a certain amount per unit. That was a logical strategy for Microsoft, which became a very big company thanks to licensing fees for Windows and other platforms. Unlike some of those other products, however, Windows Phone has struggled for adoption in its marketplace, which is dominated by Apple and Google. In response, suggests the Times of India, Microsoft may have dumped licensing fees for two Indian smartphone makers, Karbonn and Lava (Xolo). Microsoft’s biggest rival, Google, gives its Android mobile operating system away for free, a maneuver that helped it gain spectacular market-share in a relatively short amount of time. If Microsoft pursues a similar strategy in different markets, it could encourage more smartphone manufacturers to produce Windows Phone devices, which could increase the platform’s market-share—but there are no guarantees that scenario will actually play out. The smartphone market is increasingly saturated, and Microsoft’s opponents have no intention of allowing Windows Phone to gain any ground.

Submission + - 1GB of Google Drive Storage Now Costs Only $0.02 per Month

SmartAboutThings writes: Up until today, I always had the impression that cloud storage was pretty expensive and I’m sure that many will agree with me. It’s a good thing that some bright minds over at Google have the same impressions as they now have drastically discounted the monthly storage plans on Google Drive. The new monthly storage plans and their previous prices are as follows: $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB.The 2 dollar plan per month means that the price for a gigabyte gets down to an incredibly low price of only two cents per month.

Submission + - VLC Finally Launches App for Windows 8

SmartAboutThings writes: After a long journey of more than one year, which included even a successfully ended Kickstarter campaign, the VLC app for Windows 8 is officially here. VLC for Windows 8 is currently in beta, and it lacks some important features, such as the ability to open music files or support for Windows RT devices. On the good side, VLC for Windows 8 supports the same codecs as the VLC application for desktop, from MPEG-1 to H.265, through WMV3 and VC-1; it also supports multiple-audio tracks selection, embedded subtitles, background audio playback, Live Tiles, removable storage and DLNA servers.

Submission + - Ubuntu's Mir Gets Delayed Again

jones_supa writes: Delays keep piling up for the Mir display server on the Ubuntu desktop. After already being postponed multiple times, Mir might not be enabled by default on the Ubuntu Linux desktop until the 16.04 LTS release — in two years time! This was the estimate by Mark Shuttleworth in a virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit. Using Mir, Mark says, will lead to supporting more hardware, obtaining better performance, and 'do some great things' with the technology. He expects some users will start using Mir on the desktop over the next year. Mir is already packaged as an experimental option, along with an experimental Unity 8 desktop session.

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