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User: Sockatume

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Comments · 5,843

  1. Re:Well.... on Apple Edits iPhone 6's Protruding Camera Out of Official Photos · · Score: 1

    I'm an iPhone owner who's currently dithering over whether to go to a 5S for pocketability and a bit of spare change for a nice case or the 6 for the technological improvements, but thanks for playing "guess the motives". ;)

  2. Re:Not Hacked? on Tim Cook Says Apple Can't Read Users' Emails, That iCloud Wasn't Hacked · · Score: 2

    Right, it's not iCloud that was hacked, it was individual user accounts. It's the distinction between "the rotary club has been murdered" and "the members of the rotary club have been murdered".

  3. Re:Lie. on Tim Cook Says Apple Can't Read Users' Emails, That iCloud Wasn't Hacked · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...because that's not what he actually said. He has previously stated that iMessage and Facetime, by design, can't be intercepted (it's all encrypted client-side); in this new interview he stated that they don't read your email, and that as a general principle they try to design systems so that they can't capture data, or at the very least aren't capturing anything they don't need to do what they're supposed to be doing.

  4. Re:You mean... on AT&T Proposes Net Neutrality Compromise · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think the idea is that you pay the ISP for a "Netflix booster", and then your Netflix traffic gets un-humped into the fast lane. Meanwhile everyone else's Netflix is slow, and they're griping at Netflix about why they have to pay this extra fee, and Netflix eventually gives up and pays AT&T to un-hump all of its customers' traffic.

  5. Re:Implementation Fail on MIT's Cheetah Robot Runs Untethered · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's because the robot's not galloping, it's bounding. It's a completely different gait.

    Believe it or not, people who study animal locomotion do actually do research on animal locomotion.

  6. Re:Of course you use force control to run fast. on MIT's Cheetah Robot Runs Untethered · · Score: 1

    Funnily enough, those issues are the ones that the article is actually about:

    “Most robots are sluggish and heavy, and thus they cannot control force in high-speed situations,” Kim says. “That’s what makes the MIT cheetah so special: You can actually control the force profile for a very short period of time, followed by a hefty impact with the ground, which makes it more stable, agile, and dynamic.”

    Kim says what makes the robot so dynamic is a custom-designed, high-torque-density electric motor, designed by Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. These motors are controlled by amplifiers designed by David Otten, a principal research engineer in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. The combination of such special electric motors and custom-designed, bio-inspired legs allow force control on the ground without relying on delicate force sensors on the feet.

    Kim and his colleagues — research scientist Hae-Won Park and graduate student Meng Yee Chuah — will present details of the bounding algorithm this month at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Chicago.

  7. Re:Dupe? on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) One story was the juicy rumour. The other was the confirmation of the juicy rumour. It's not like it's the first time this has happened on Slashdot, or any other tech news site.
    2) Two stores is not "so many Minecraft stories"

  8. Re:911 was down for us Friday night on Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2's Album On Their Devices · · Score: 1

    Yes, there's an auto-download setting on the Mac.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

  9. Re:Ads on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that goarilla was actually just making an atrocious data-mining pun.

  10. Re:Minecraft itself is a phenomenon, but on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Moichandising, moichandising. Minecraft the game isn't worth $2.5 Bn but I suspect that the Minecraft licencing business will probably add up to that much in the long run.

  11. Will continue to be developed for other platforms on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to Mojang, Microsoft has agreed not to meddle in the development of the game for other platforms, although they point out that they can't do anything about any objections platformholders might have about distributing a Microsoft game.

  12. Re:Poor Math Skills on Universal Big Bang Lithium Deficit Confirmed · · Score: 1

    Yes, "more" is the addition operator, "times" is the multiplication operator. Combining the two is idiomatic but generally read as just meaning multiplication.

  13. Re:power consumption? on Early iPhone 6 Benchmark Results Show Only Modest Gains For A8 · · Score: 1

    I'm still using an iPhone 4, which is now four generations behind. I've had no problem with app performance outside of (of course) 3D games. This thing's aging better than my Nokia 3310 did.

    Most apps aren't all that technically demanding.

  14. Re:didn't have to be worse.. on Sapphire Glass Didn't Pass iPhone Drop Test According to Reports · · Score: 1

    There's one Android phone shipping with sapphire glass - the Kyocera Brigadier - and it's one of those "ruggedised" models that's permanently moulded into a giant rubber shoe. When the glass was removed from the enormous impact-resistant body, it shattered on the first three-foot drop test:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    You won't see a sapphire screen in a non-ruggedised phone any time soon.

  15. Poor Math Skills on Universal Big Bang Lithium Deficit Confirmed · · Score: 1

    It's not a maths issue, it's an issue of idiomatic versus literal English. "N times more" doesn't mean "Add N times the original value", it just means "N times the original value". Similarly "N times less" doesn't mean "Subtract N times the original value", it means "reciprocal N times the original value".

  16. Re:beta.slashdot.org STOP on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately there's no /etc/hosts file for MUTHUR.

  17. Re:beta.slashdot.org STOP on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 2

    We've decoded part of that beta invitation... except it doesn't look like it was an invitation. It looks like it was a warning.

  18. Re:meh on Giant Greek Tomb Discovered · · Score: 5, Funny

    You really should've called them out on calling it "BC" rather than "BCE" while you were at it. What's pedantry without thoroughness?

  19. Might even be pragmatic sometimes on Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Quite aside from tradition, which is great, there are situations where you need to send a message to a physical address. Maybe the occupant doesn't have a phone or email, or you don't know their contact details, or whether they even have a phone or email. If that message has to get there within three hours rather than overnight, then the $4.30 rate is pretty competitive with getting an express courier to carry a post-it note.

  20. Re:Football Manager on Soccer Talent Scouting Application Teams Up With Video Game Publisher · · Score: 1

    Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was referring to the game called Football Manager that used to be called Championship Manager, with the religious following.

  21. Re:Soccer, or football... on Soccer Talent Scouting Application Teams Up With Video Game Publisher · · Score: 2

    If my experience at conferences has taught me anything, it's that without football we'd have a lot more very sober and very grumpy scientists in Europe.

  22. Football Manager on Soccer Talent Scouting Application Teams Up With Video Game Publisher · · Score: 1

    I should explain for those unfamiliar with Football Manager (nee Championship Manager): it's not really like a game. It's more like an enormous spreadsheet crossed with a fanatical religion. There was uproar when they added a little simulation of the matches playing out using coloured dots... in 2003.

    You kind of suspect that there's some huge archive of historical data about football in the back of a project like that, to parameterise the players and teams, but it never occurred to me that they had 1300 of their own scouts performing observations.

  23. Re:Explain something to me on Apple and Samsung Agree To Drop Cases Outside the US · · Score: 1

    That's true for trademarks, but not patents.

  24. Re:I don't get it on Samsung Announces Galaxy Alpha Featuring Metal Frame and Rounded Corners · · Score: 1

    Customisation. Pre-2010 there was a lot of aesthetic variety in devices' shape, size, materials, colour, etc. However phones are basically big rectangles these days, while logistics and manufacturing approaches in consumer electronics favour doing fewer models in bigger numbers. There's a desire to be able to reshape these devices to something that suits its owner a bit more.

  25. Re:I don't get it on Samsung Announces Galaxy Alpha Featuring Metal Frame and Rounded Corners · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would think that going without a case on a £600 phone is a better signal of "I've got money to burn".