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User: Smauler

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Comments · 1,915

  1. Re:AI. It's like 3D TV. We don't have it. on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    The point is knowing that your consciousness exists doesn't help you know that other's consciousness exists. I know my consciousness exists, but how do you know my consciousness exists?

  2. Re:What happened? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Gray to gray speed is not the same thing as response time. Manufacturers don't generally provide response time numbers, they have to be tested by third parties. The best LCDs are generally about 50ms or so.

  3. Re:AI. It's like 3D TV. We don't have it. on Replacing the Turing Test · · Score: 1

    Consciousness is by definition not provable by just about anything.

    Once automatons mimic you, how would you show consciousness over their patterns?

  4. Re:Making fun of religion on Sites Featuring "Terrorism" Or "Child Pornography" To Be Blocked In France · · Score: 1

    I am not the French Government

    Of course not, Louis XIV is.

  5. Re:What happened? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 2

    User interface.

    Any delay is bad, and response time reflects that. If you're _only_ taking photos and looking at them, then response time does not matter. Anything else, it's important.

  6. Re:What happened? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Wait.... which monitors got better? Cheap monitors are undeniably better now, but I kept an old CRT around for ages because it was much better with some things, most importantly for me response time.

    Response time has got much worse with the advent of anything but CRT.

    Now, I'll agree that monitors got cheaper, and higher resolution, but not necessarily better. 120hz is rare now, too.

  7. Re:What happened? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    The Canon S3 has much better lenses than any smartphone. That's the difference, and it's the only real difference. If we could make lenses smaller, and light behave in accordance with something that is not physics, we'd all have professional class cameras now.

    The megapixel drive, whilst valuable, has ignored the fact that you can't get all that much from a tiny lens. The megapixel count on smartphones is largely irrelevant now, because of the lens restrictions.

  8. Re:Great.... on The Algorithm That 'Sees' Beauty In Photographic Portraits · · Score: 1

    The best pictures are almost always taken by amateurs, because the best situations are so rare, and at least 99% of photos are taken by amateurs now.

    Personally, I don't think there are many photos better than the crasher squirrel.

  9. Re: Problems with the staff on The Pirate Bay Is Back Online, Properly · · Score: 1

    Not all malware is a virus, just about every virus is malware. Viruses aren't all that useful to people who are trying to steal your bank details, because they're indiscriminate.

  10. Re: Problems with the staff on The Pirate Bay Is Back Online, Properly · · Score: 1

    Slashdot does not allow edits for a reason. Editing troll posts 24 hours afterwards makes for very disjointed discussion, and makes other people look stupid.

  11. Re:"GRR Martin is not your bitch" on George R. R. Martin's "The Winds of Winter" Wiill Not Be Published In 2015 · · Score: 1

    I read all the Wheel of Time books until about 7 or 8, after which I lost interest. However, I've currently nearly finished listening to the total series on audiobook (half way through a memory of light). It's 19 days, 5 hrs, 25min long, so if anyone spoils the end for me now, I may well be a little pissed off.

    No, I won't be reading any replies to this comment.

  12. Re:Hey! I've been gypped! on NVIDIA Responds To GTX 970 Memory Bug · · Score: 1

    Never heard of autocon. I'd bet it used some of that 640k though.

  13. Re:It's a little early on Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Food That Contains DNA · · Score: 1

    Salt, and water. That's about it.

  14. Re:False Advertising on NVIDIA Responds To GTX 970 Memory Bug · · Score: 2

    Anyone who buys a graphics card based on how much memory it has is going to be disappointed. It's _way_ cheaper to chuck mediocre cards out with lots of RAM than it is to produce good cards.

    Benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks, people. Don't look at what it is called, or how much memory it has, look at what it _does_. I'm talking about real world gaming benchmarks here, not 3dmark or anything. And yes, they do manipulate these a bit, but it's much, much harder to manipulate them.

    All that being said, this is a shitty move by nvidia.

  15. Re:Hey! I've been gypped! on NVIDIA Responds To GTX 970 Memory Bug · · Score: 1

    My autoexec.bat by the end was just a menu with 7 options at the start, with it jumping to the right parts depending on the thing I wanted to run. The config.sys was not as easy to automate - you just had to rename the files and reboot. Getting DOOM to run on 4 separate computers together back then was.... challenging, especially if you didn't run IPX natively. It was possible, though, and when I got doom set up 4 person multiplayer, it was a revelation at the time for me and my friends. This was 20 years ago, and it was new. One of the computers was a 386, and (unsurprisingly) had a pretty awful FPS rate... the worst players always seemed to end up on that one ;).

    And yes, I did have different autoexecs for every machine.

  16. Re:64bit on Microsoft Ends Mainstream Support For Windows 7 · · Score: 1

    When upgrading from 2k, installing Vista, on a brand new computer, I had a load of problems with it. I needed newer versions of directx, being a gamer, which were not available with 2k. It'd BSOD at a certain point in the installation, without fail. I didn't have the internet by other means, so I thought.... why not just try to boot off of the old 2k hard drive? This was just a HD spat in a new system, no messing with it at all.

    It booted in 640*480, and I was amazed. Standards FTW. I managed to connect to the internet (after a while), and then find my problem (which was not my problem).

    It turns out it was the original Vista not working with nforce motherboards with more than 4gb RAM installed, at all...

    The solution was to install Vista with 2gb, then add the other memory later after having applied a hotfix.

    Since then Vista has been good to me, I've had good uptime (4 months+), and constant stability.... but I'll always remember 2k.

  17. Re:Just give the option to turn it off... on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    No one *needs* to hear the engine noise to know when to shift. Feeling the car's velocity and knowing what gear one's in is sufficient information most of the time.

    Tell me exactly how one "feels the cars velocity"? When you're going a set speed, there is no feeling at all. Relying on a change of direction to tell you which way to steer is awkward.

    If you meant visual cues (but didn't say it), they can be less useful in lots of circumstances. I personally know corners by aural engine speed and other feedback, and learning them again in a different car is different.

  18. Re:Just give the option to turn it off... on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    NA and turbo engines sound different, but they're both awesome.

    I drive an Integra type R, 1.8 litre NA, and I don't mind if it "farts" once in a while. This is not because it's not "tuned right".

  19. Re:Just give the option to turn it off... on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    For driving a manual car the engine noise serves a purpose too, but it's getting more and more rare even here in Europe.

    To be fair, automatics have been getting better and better recently. Most new lorries are automatic (I learnt with a 16 speed gearbox on my HGV test, though). As long as there's a separate test in the UK for automatics and manuals, most people will take the manual test. There's talk of allowing HGV tests being allowed to be taken in automatics currently, though.

    Note that anyone taking their HGV test will already have passed their car test in a manual.

  20. Re:Just give the option to turn it off... on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    I drive a 1.8 litre 4 pot normally aspirated Japanese 4 seat hatchback, mainly because it didn't cost much (£2,500, used obviously), it is reliable (1 major breakdown in 5 years), hasn't cost anything for basic maintenance (2 new full set of tyres for £100 a set in 5 years, literally no oil except for services (it doesn't lose any)), and can get 30mpg or so.

    It also does 0-60 in 6 point something seconds or so, has a top speed of 150, and sounds amazing naturally.

    I don't treat it right, either. I play with lift off oversteer a lot, and rev the engine to 9000 rpm or so when accelerating.

    Now the bad : It's useless as a long distance cruiser, it sits at over 4000rpm in 5th gear at 70mph, it hasn't got a 6th, if you want good mpg you're going to have to sit at 50. Added to that, it is more noisy because it's got lots of sound insulation stripped from it as standard. Also, insurance isn't that great either, I'm currently paying £400 or so (which is a lot, because I'm almost the lowest risk there is). That's about it.

    Integra Type R DC2. I bought it because it sounds amazing. I kept it because it was.

    LOL, there's an advertising slogan if ever I heard one.

  21. Re:Pope Francis - fuck your mother on Pope Francis: There Are Limits To Freedom of Expression · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you poke a bear cub with a stick long enough, its mom might come and maul the shit out of you.

    Yeah... you do know that bears are not people, right? We generally try to hold Muslims to higher standards than we do bears.

  22. Re:This could be fun.... on Man Saves Wife's Sight By 3D Printing Her Tumor · · Score: 2

    "Non-profit" does not mean they're not paying their employees massive salaries, and never did. I don't know where people got the idea that non-profits had to pay their employees less.

  23. Re:64bit on Microsoft Ends Mainstream Support For Windows 7 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    XP will go down in history as the best OS made. Ever.

    Win2k was better.

  24. Re: Makes sense. on Google Throws Microsoft Under Bus, Then Won't Patch Android Flaw · · Score: 1

    I'm still running a ten year old Windows OS which gets free updates. DirectX11 was almost 5 years after Vista's launch.

    Upgrades are not the issue, unpatched security vulnerabilities are.

  25. Re:Let's ban all guns! on Gunmen Kill 12, Wound 7 At French Magazine HQ · · Score: 1

    This is a good example (warning, pdf). See table 2, which shows that handgun offences were at 2648 in 1997, the year they were banned, and had risen to 5874 by 2001/2.

    There isn't any evidence to show that handgun crime fell or stayed the same after the ban, because it didn't, it more than doubled in 5 years.