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Comment Re:Why a decade later (Score 1) 629

I thought it was horrific, and his explanation as to why I felt that way is fantastic. I love his work! I watched the whole 7 parts 2 days ago when posted at Reddit - and couldn't stop until the end.

I saw Star Wars 12 times at the movies in 1978, and I am a fan of the series.

But I have to be honest - I enjoyed watching this review more than I enjoyed the movie itself - which isn't hard, I admit.

Comment Why bother? (Score 5, Insightful) 416

Why let yourself in for a world of hurt for a device which will likely never operate in the way you require.

Best to give it as a gift, or sell it on eBay and pocket the cash, and invest that in your stand alone box.

Frankly, I can't believe you are even contemplating it.

Comment Sorry - no good. (Score 1) 439

Sorry AMD but this isn't any good.

Treating multiple displays as a single display is great for gaming, but sucks donkey testicles for everything else.

The ONLY possible acceptable solution is that in 2D mode each display is discrete (or have it selectable WITHOUT restarting) and have 3D mode present as a single display.

This because nay kind of normal work becomes bullshit.

I use 3x 22" LCDs both at home and at work, and I can tell you that nVidia's multi display technology is superior to AMDs in every regard, provided you have Ultramon installed and also the nVidia control which adds extra buttons to the top left of each window: "Maximise across all monitors" and "Send to Monitor".

Without these features using multiple displays gets painful.

Inparticular, it is bullshit when you maximise a window but can't get it to sit just on one screen.

Oh - there's NO DOUBT I'll be getting one of these cards, but by god they'd better have the software well-sorted so that all possible combinations of 2D/3D single and multiple monitors are supported and are easily selectable, or programmable depending on what your preferences are.

Comment WTF? (Score 1) 383

Why would the researchers be surprised by this? Jesus, you don't need to be in medicine (I'm not, but I am interested, and my Dad's a doctor) to easily know that a few extra pounds are good for you.

When people get sick, their body often turns cannibalistic; consuming itself to try and heal. If you have no extra weight, then your body will start consuming muscle tissue, and all the associated problems that brings.

By having some fatty tissue in excess of the ideal BMI, you provide yourself a reservoir of energy which your body can use in the event of illness.

Certainly a "normal healthy" weight person who gets sick may end up quite frail after an illness, making it more likely they'll be injured, or suffer an infection subsequently.

Comment I won't fly with a "Battle Hardened" pilot. (Score 2, Insightful) 911

Generally airlines stopped hiring ex-military pilots as they tend to crash too often killing hundreds of people at a time.

Military pilots find it hard to change from "Achieve objective; fly hard and kill bad guys" to "Land passengers safely at all costs" mentality.

A huge oversimplification to say that US maker Boeing provides the freedom for pilots to fly. By the same token, you might well say that The US is the most over-regulated country on the planet, so why are pilots allowed to fly it with such freedom?

I think that in general, you are arguably better off when the pilots are connected to the flight surfaces via manual controls. Even if the power and hydraulics go out with enough strength you may move some control surfaces a little - perhaps enough to control a plane in level flight - maybe even land it.

But if FBW shits itself - you are TOAST.

And for every crash caused by pilots not being able to take the control of a plane, there's probably another crash averted by the computer.

The biggest problem of course is that flying a wide-bodied jet is 99.9999999% pure boredom followed by 0.0000000001% when you live or die because of a series of bad circumstances piling on top of each other.

If the hardware fails for any reason (pilots get wrong information) then they can't expect to live for long - especially if the computers are flying it. At least if sensors start failing, humans are flexible enough to know something is wrong, and work around it.

In general, I would prefer to be flying on a wide bodied jet that has the computer fly the entire flight, but with a pilot on board who is exceptionally good at looking at the computer non-stop to decide if it is working right. I expect that pilot to be so good, that he understands the point at which he needs to kick the auto-pilot into touch, and take control of the plane.

See my signature. It's standard, not put here for this post.

Comment Re:for fat and ntfs (Score 1) 399

Agreed. GetDataBack (Two versions, one for FAT and one for NTFS) are outstanding. If the drive spins, and the drive is recognised by the BIOS then GDB will..... get your data back.

Most importantly, disconnect and de-power any drive which suffers any kind of failure, and do not power it back up until GDB is installed, registered and ready to work. Practice recovering data from a known-good drive before trying your dead-drive.

GDB will recover damaged files as well as undamaged ones. Getting all your porn back might involve some of your images being sliced across the middle with corrupted JPD data... ;)

One truly great thing about GDB is that it can recover files from a dead drive faster than Windows Explorer will copy them from a good drive!

Firstly, and most importantly in this whole process: Beat over the head whichever fool forgot to backup correctly.

Comment It's all very well, but it's not what we want. (Score 1) 384

Not sure about anyone else, but this technology, while great, is only the very start of automatic projection.

Ultimately this technology is useless, because why do you need a screen when any available surface will do? He's putting a rectangular screen down on a white table for goodness sake. What's wrong with projecting directly onto the table?

Look Here's the device we really need: It's a box no bigger than a packet of cigarettes, and will run all day on a single dose of Methane.

It has a screen on one face, but no buttons.

When you place it on a surface, it automatically projects a keyboard onto the surface in front of it, adjusted for angle of course, and then it uses its own projector to survey the surfaces around it. If it's on a flat surface like a table, it'll project the screen directly onto the table. If it's next to a wall it'll prject directly on the wall.

It'll use its inbuilt camera to locate the user's head in space, and it'll correct whatever it projects so the image stays true for the user.

The user could adjust the size of the screen, also. Hell, it could even be projected in 3D.

Plus, it should make little difference what its being projected onto. A smart survey would include measuring the colours and shades of any surface being projected onto. The device should colour correct to effectively remove patterns and colours on the actual screen surface. Sure, you can't get around that 100% - but enough to make it usable on what is currently an unacceptable screen.

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