Comment Re:France is just jealous... (Score 1) 278
Actually it means "Goat Ass".
Comment Re:Don't try to "get around" it (Score 2) 111
Try telling that to your clients."I'm not making it compatible with half of the browsers out there because it's too complicated".
Comment Re:screw vies (Score 1) 459
I have a Galaxy S and am very happy of it... except for Samsung Kies. I got my phone just before the 2.2 update and still haven't managed to make Kies recognize it when it's plugged in. I tried reformatting the phone, installing different versions of Kies, spent hours on troubleshooting forums but it still doesn't work.
Comment Re:Hmmm... (Score 1) 86
I guess you have to pass the connection from one cab to another. It's called soft handover except it doesn't exist for WiFi.... yet. Also WiFi uses OFDM which involves very close - almost overlapping - frequency bands. Add some doppler effect (vehicle in movement) and your signal's gone.
Comment I'm European and what is this? (Score 1) 637
Health insurance: already included in my paycheck.
Gym membership: don't have one.
Current account with non-pharma drug provider: never heard of that.
Birth control pill prescription: You can usually get these without a prescription if you ask nicely :)
NPR membership : What is this?
So I guess I would choose phone line even though I haven't used a land line in the past 6 years.
Gym membership: don't have one.
Current account with non-pharma drug provider: never heard of that.
Birth control pill prescription: You can usually get these without a prescription if you ask nicely
NPR membership
So I guess I would choose phone line even though I haven't used a land line in the past 6 years.
Sony To Launch First 3D PS3 Games On Friday 151
Stoobalou writes "Sony plans to show off the first 3D PlayStation 3 games in the UK on 10 June, with a retail launch on 11 June. If you were wondering why Sony is shutting down half the PSN today for maintenance, then wonder no more. We reckon the company's simply gearing up for the launch of the PlayStation 3's first stereoscopic 3D games. Unfortunately, many game developers are seemingly indifferent to the 3D revolution at the moment. In fact, EA CEO John Riccitiello reckons that it's going to be a good three years before 3D becomes a standard gaming feature. Riccitiello explained that there's a big difference between converting a game to run in 3D mode and properly developing it to take full advantage of the extra dimension."
The Nuts and Bolts of PlayStation 3D 154
The Digital Foundry blog took an in-depth look at how Sony is introducing 3D technology to PlayStation 3 games. They give a step-by-step description of how the system generates a 3D frame (or rather, a pair of frames), and the graphical hurdles that need be to overcome to ensure the games look good. The article also discusses some of the subtle effects 3D technology can have on gameplay:
"'One interesting thing came through in the immersion aspect was that in the first-person camera view, it felt so much more like being there. Typically when most people play MotorStorm, something like 90 per cent play in the third-person view,' Benson explains. 'As soon as we put the 3D settings in place, the first-person view became a lot more popular, a lot more people were using that view. This could indicate that 3D could perhaps change the standards, if you like.' ... 'We found that in the first-person view the game is giving you all the sorts of cues that you're used to in normal driving: speed perception, the ability to judge distances, things like that. It's far easier to avoid track objects.' The insertion of true stereoscopic 3D into MotorStorm also brings about a new sense of appreciation of the scale and size of the game world and the objects within it."
Comment Re:Too small a sample size (Score 1) 260
DirectX 11 Coming To Browser Games 200
arcticstoat writes "Forget Farmville, Flash puzzlers and 8-bit home computer emulators. The next generation of browser games will be able to take advantage of DirectX 11 effects, not to mention multi-core processing and both Havok and PhysX physics effects. A new browser plug-in called WebVision will be available for Trinergy's new game engine, Vision Engine 8. This will enable game developers to port all the advanced effects from the game engine over to all the common browsers. Of course, any budding 3D-browser-game dev will face the problem that not every PC has a decent graphics card that can handle advanced graphics effects. Not only that, but limited bandwidth will also limit what effects a developer can realistically implement into a browser game. Nevertheless, this is an interesting development that could result in some tight 3D programming, as well as some much more interesting browser games."
4-Winged Proto-Bird Unearthed In China; Predates Archaeopteryx 140
Wired reports on a find described September 24 in a note at Nature and the day after at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology: a dinosaur fossil bearing true feathers on four limbs. The fossil was discovered in northeastern China, in strata believed to have been deposited between 151 million and 161 million years ago. If that estimate is correct, the newly discovered Anchiornis huxleyi is at least one million years older than the believed age of the more famous winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx.
Comment PHP advice legitimity (Score 1) 106
I'm no PHP guru, but reading some of their advice on PHP made me flinch.
Don't copy variables for no reason.
Sometimes PHP novices attempt to make their code "cleaner" by copying predefined variables to variables with shorter names. What this actually results in is doubled memory consumption, and therefore, slow scripts. In the following example, imagine if a malicious user had inserted 512KB worth of characters into a textarea field. This would result in 1MB of memory being used!
BAD:
$description = $_POST['description'];
echo $description;
GOOD:
echo $_POST['description'];
Now I would never question the almighty Google, but the Rasmus Lerdorf taught me that PHP uses copy-on-write. Quoting from his O'Reilly Programming PHP book:
When you copy a value from one variable to another, PHP doesn't get more memory for a copy of the value. Instead, it updates the symbol table to say "both of these variables are names for the same chunk of memory."
So who's right? I tend to believe M. Lerdorf since he pretty much invented PHP but like I said before I'm not an expert and my book is pretty old so (PHP 4.1.0) so maybe that has changed since (although I doubt it)...
Microsoft Launches New "Get the Facts" Campaign 524
ko9 writes that Microsoft has re-launched its "'Get the facts' campaign, in an attempt to promote Internet Explorer 8. It contains a chart that compares IE8 to Firefox and Chrome. Needless to say, IE8 comes out as the clear winner, with MS suggesting it is the only browser to provide features like 'privacy,' 'security,' 'reliability.' It even claims to have Firefox beat in 'customizability.'"
US Army Will Upgrade To Windows Vista 374
MojoKid writes "While many organizations are preparing for an upgrade to Windows 7, the US Army is upgrading to Windows Vista. The upgrade will include getting rid of all the Office 2003 programs and installing Office 2007 in its place, and is scheduled for a Dec. 31 completion date. Half the Army's computers (they have 744,000 desktop units) have Office 2007 so far, and 13 percent are on Vista, which was released in January 2007. Windows 7 is supposed to launch before year's end, so the Army will be fully on Vista sometime after Microsoft's next-generation OS is already launched."
Comment Install The Gorilla on it (Score 1) 544
If you're into gaming just buy an adapter to connect your laptop to a TV and a couple game controllers and install The Gorilla on your PC. That way you can turn your broken laptop into a ghetto retro gaming system with an interface you can navigate using only a gaming controller.
(Unfortunately the guy who created The Gorilla apparently died about 2 years ago so don't expect any updates soon...)
(Unfortunately the guy who created The Gorilla apparently died about 2 years ago so don't expect any updates soon...)
IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent 277
theodp writes "The USPTO has granted IBM a patent for utilizing naming conventions to assign gender-based avatars for instant messaging. A user named Teri, IBM explains, would be given a girl avatar, while a user named Terry would be provided with a boy avatar. The three IBM 'inventors' were stymied by users named Pat, who as a result will be assigned a 'generic, genderless human figure image as his or her avatar.' Way to honor that significant-technical-content patent pledge, Big Blue!"
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