Posts by Paul Brandon

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

Insanity Rules

There may be no money, but what there is could (and should) have been spent in far better ways. The axing of Harrier instead of Tornado is insane. Keep our pocket carriers flying Harriers, keep a useful capability and keep the Fleet Air Arm in practice then recycle as Helicopter carriers, they would only need to ditch a couple more Frigates to pay for it.

Still at least they didn't follow Robert Peston's supposedly "sensible" idea that carriers are useless and we should switch a carrier for a Frigate order

Approaching space object 'artificial, not asteroid' says NASA

We found one

Would be great if this was the answer to the question "Where are all the von Neumann probes?"

Brit firm sells hi-tech fabric vehicle armour to DARPA

@scum

Some selective quoting there, what comes before the line you quoted is "The magnetron was first described by German physicist Erich Habann"

Anyway the invention referred to is the Cavity Magnetron (which we gave to the Yanks in exchange for them to mass produce it for us) initially patented by the Germans and abandoned, followed up by the British. It allowed lightweight high resolution radar to be mounted on aircraft. They even used them to hunt u-boats by detecting an exposed persiscope.

I think you'll find on the same wikipedia page the quote the Americans said about the Cavity Magnetron - "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"

Darling's £0.5bn offshore windfarm 'leccy-bill stealth levy

Damn naivety!

@AC - "Figures Please"

Think about it - If wind power were cheaper the Government wouldn't need the Renewals obligation to force the power companies to buy it. They would be buying it in spades themselves and demanding more. Lots of little generators are more costly and less efficient than one big one.

@AC - "half a billion powers half a million?"

You really think that a power company is going to charge you a one-off £1000 fee for what they spent building the farm? You can bet they'll still charge you through the nose for the priviledge each year, not to mention all that maintainence they'll have to do in Saline conditions and all that spare capacity and gas they'll have to keep for that inevitable slow moving winter high!

Brits 'a bunch of yellow bastards', says irate Yank

CAAF

For those who hadn't figured it out, the clue is in the article CAAF = Coward And A Fool.

He may be right in one sense you'd be a fool to go up against a wild bear hand to hand, but it's hardly cowardly :)

So Brits = Heroic Fools

USians = Sensible Cowards

Which is better?!

Deleted

Prototype

It's obvious, she's a Lizard Alliance prototype - a clone designed to entice much of the populace into blind worship of said exemplary midriff and distract the world from their dastardly plans.

Apple ups the ante in Psystar battle

OS not modified

As far as I understand it, they haven't modified OSX as they then wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on, and they would know it, all it needs is a PC with BIOS modifications (which isn't part of the OS) as OSX runs perfecly fine on Intel x86 kit as it does in a real mac

Humbug

Some of the analogies here are complete rubbish, for example a Kia with a Ferrari engine, absolutely possible, you get a car mod company to do it (not that its incredibly likely) and as far as I know that's completely legal.

Altering the OS on a phone, if a company came up with a way to put a motorola OS on a nokia phone should they be stopped (yes it may not actually be possible, but what if?, wouldn't you like that choice?)

But a company that finds a way to put Mac OS on a non-mac platform, that's a no no - why? Apple are still paid for the OS and as long as Apple aren't required to support it and the other company provides that, then again, why not?! Because Apple want you to pay Apple for the hardware too that's why and that is monpolistic.

Dell hits all the wrong keys – again

@Richard Lloyd

If you want a pound sign on a foreign keyboard, hold down alt and type in 0163. Had to do that a lot with a German Keyboard, which is a very interesting layout (It's a QWERTZ keyboard over there)

Top-end Fords will be watching your rear

Bikers

As another biker I am concerned that if it's detection rate on bikes is any less than 100% then there's going to be trouble. I know of a traffic light system that only goes green if there is traffic waiting, fair enough as it gives priority to a dual carriageway, but it only detects me half the time and I have to jump red lights!

This is just going to encourage people not to bother to look and we'll get a new excuse, sorry mate my radar didn't see you!

UK presses car ferry to ship powdered plutonium

Cavalier my arse!?

This stuff is heavily guarded even more so than John Prescott's lunch box! seeing a nuke train role through Stafford station a couple of years ago, bristling with machine gun carrying guards was slightly unnerving to say the least. They would easily best the level of general (in)competence shown be today's would be terrorists. Trying the terrorist angle on this is just plain bollox.

However problem really being looked at here is if the (possibly inadequate) ship goes down - would be a nasty surprise for the would be salvage hunter!

DARPA seeks $750m for hypersonic roboplane testbed

Black Budgets

For all we know, they are announcing they are going to build the already built Aurora (and it's going to make it's public debut in a couple of years), and this is really a cover to channel funds into some other blacker than black project!

Designs for SpaceShipTwo displayed in New York

@Whatever

You have to start somewhere, in the commercial world you don't risk going for the big one straight away. This opens up an oppurtunity to far more people (even if they need thousands) and a potential revenue stream that will pay for Tier 2, which is believed to be an Orbital craft on Scaled Composites drawing boards. Which will be infinitely more expensive due to the re-entry problems they'll have to solve when moving at orbital speeds. Besides once sub-orbital is proved it'll bring more investment. So it's a start and they're getting somewhere!

Three Little Pigs book deemed offensive to Muslims

Tell me if I'm wrong...

But don't Muslims just frown upon the eating of pig based products and not the right of pigs to exist and build shelter for themselves? In fact in the original story they avoid getting eaten, wouldn't that give it a pro-muslim bias?

I for one call for rebellion against our PC Nazi overlords!

US boffins create GM 'supercarrot'

Strong Bones

There is only one way this is heading, Rampant Strong Boned Super Bunnies shall soon inheret the Earth, mostly due to a population explosion!

Japanese whalers lash protesters to mast

Here's how

Sea Shepard is slightly more militant in it's approach to protesting than Greenpeace, and have been known to give Japanese whalers a friendly nudge with their own ship. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a pirate-esque boarding involing swinging on ropes.

Microsoft offers $300m for web-washing ad campaign

Something more apt

Windows Brown Wire - Quality Sh*t on Demand.

(P.S. For those who've never wired a UK plug - Brown Wire = Live)