Comment

Don’t draw a comparison with the console Kinect – it’s designed to work with a lot of people across a living room.

A laptop or tablet version would be designed around one user (two at a push) with a maximum expected range of ~ 2-3 foot, meaning a much smaller image sensor and a fixed/limited-focus lens.

about 15 hours ago on Microsoft's new Kinect will be coming to Windows 1 reply 1 recommend

Comment

The console Kinect is large because it needs a decent enough lens and sensor to work across a living room. A sensor suitable for a laptop or tablet could be much smaller.

about 15 hours ago on Microsoft's new Kinect will be coming to Windows 2 recommends

Comment

How does this even work when Imperial Stormtroopers are supposed to be clones?

12 days ago on Disney puts your face on a 3D-printed Stormtrooper for $99.95 3 replies

Comment

Is the code still on GitHub? Just because Aldenhoven won’t update it, doesn’t mean someone else won’t.

14 days ago on Spotify patches Chrome exploit that allowed MP3 downloads of any song 1 reply 4 recommends

Comment

But isn’t the key issue that ‘someone is getting paid’. It’s up to the men in the suits to negotiate better deals – if the royalties for streaming are too low, why is it my problem?

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song 1 reply

Comment

But wouldn’t a Romney administration have required state-issue grammar phones to do away with all this expensive socialist technowizardry?

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song 2 replies 1 recommend

Comment

The BBC ran an article on people exploiting a design flaw in Eurolocks to crack or bump all but the latest designs.

It didn’t increase the amount of burglaries – it just meant that all new locks met a design standard and people made their houses more secure.

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song 1 recommend

Comment

Encryption will add an overhead and a level of complexity, which is not what they want because the sort of devices that use the web player are gutless devices like netbooks and chromebooks.

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song

Comment

But there’s no real way of identifying who is doing it… it is exploiting the web player as it is designed to work (that is, requesting a file from a URL).

Moving to single-use URLs would resolve it, but might also impact on the ability to seamlessly stream because the file couldn’t be re-requested once it started playing.

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song

Comment

Yeah, that does look like an abuse case!

14 days ago on Spotify's nightmare realized: Chrome extension allows MP3 download of any song 1 reply 1 recommend

Comment

Stores were definitely a lot nicer places than the Comets and Currys often next door. Staff were also more pleasant/less obtrusive.

22 days ago on Best Buy sells off final remnants of failed UK business 1 reply

Comment

Well, not quite. Apple are also pushing to get locked-down iOS functionality and UI paradigms into OSX. Microsoft just took an uncharacteristic move and leapt first.

about 1 month ago on Windows 8.1 set to bring back the Start button 5 replies

Comment

Because they ‘had to’, otherwise their pre-W7 marketshare would have evaporated, possibly to Linux, where there would be no coming back from!

about 1 month ago on Windows 8.1 set to bring back the Start button 1 reply 1 recommend