Posts by Stewart Haywood

Boffin builds DIY solar cell from doughnuts and tea

All this time...

...and I didn't realize that police officers were solar powered.

Minister admits thought crime is on the agenda

@Thought of a Thought Crime

When thought crimes come to court, life gets really interesting. By the time it has come to court, the police and lawyers for the prossecution must have thought exactly what they think the person in the dock has thought. So they must be guilty too. If it is a jury trial, if the person is found guilty, the jury must have thought what they think the guilty person is thought to have thought . That is a whole lot of people to throw in jail. One dodgy cartoon in a newspaper or in junk mail and we could have the whole country in jail. Surely it is best to just pull everyone's passports now, declare the UK a penal colony, and avoid all the expense of huge numbers of court cases.

Lights out, Britons told - we're running out of power

The Best Way

to cut back on carbon output is sign up to get natural gas from Russia. That's what the rest of the EU has done.

Boffins build 'slow glass' light-trapping nanodoughnut

Sloe Gin

I made sloe gin once. Perhaps becasue I used a fast glass it had the same effect as ordinary gin.

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

Smoke and Mirrors

I would have thought that it was easier to look for terrists rather than sharp things and bottles of witches potions, terrists are bigger. All this pinching of nail cippers and tennis bats by a bunch of scruffy, unhealthy looking in-breds is smoke and mirrors, I hope.

UK.gov ditches multi-million spooknet project

Really good security.

So, they will be able to listen to everyone but will be able to tell nobody about what they hear. That's what I call really good security.

Black helicopter because I wonder if those work or are they just for decoration?

MPs told PGP 'incompatible' with Parliament network

@stf/#@plt$

The real problem is with PGP® Whole Disk Encryption. This can render CDs and DVDs left on trains useless to newspaper editors.

OOps, how do you do un-encrypted titles?

Three months on, you still can't get off the DNA database

@'I was just following orders! Guv'

Ah, so you think that there will be another election do you?

What is the betting that a general election will be left until a terrorist inspired state of emergency can be declared and the election postponed? UK law does already provide for such a thing to be done.

Pirates ecause the UK has already been boarded.

Ryanair may charge cattle to use the bog

So,

They will no longer offer bog standard service then?

UK 'bad' pics ban to stretch?

@What about sound recordings?

OH NO! They are not getting my library of slurping noises.

Amazon pulls Japanese rape simulator from shelves

@Played it by AC

Use your left hand, it frees up your right hand for the mouse and also makes it feel like someone else is doing it. How can you not know that, your not a Banker are you?

That's what a left hand looks like.

Photography rights: Snappers to descend on Scotland Yard

@Don't think we should be bashing the police

I agree.

I think that the NUJ are ideally situated to make things clear to the government. They could addopt the attitude that for "security reasons" they will not be publishing the identity, location or day to day activities of any government minister (possibly even any MP, but that might be asking a bit much of them). The only true way to hurt a politician is to not mention their name or their activities.

Jacqui Smith cracks down on gangs via computers, closets

Good grief

So she is going to ban things that are already banned. Sounds like a really good plan, well thought out.

She is going to prevent gang members from being in their gangs territory. First of all, it is dumb to recognise any area as being any gang's territory. This would be part way to making their claim on a territory legitimate. Second, this will have the effect of moving them into an area claimed by some other gang and starting a gang war.

Hiding your face will be illegal. That is going to piss off Muslim women again, well done. Motor cycle helmets are going to be a bit of a problem. I assume that Santa will have to be clean shaven and no masks for doctors or nurses. This one is obviously going to upset the SAS, not a good move.

You're barcoded: The sneaky under-25 route to compulsory ID

Interesting behaviour

I am sure that in England and Wales people from 5 to 17 years can drink in private with no problem. To drink on licensed premises you have to be 18 or over. There is an exception, at 16 and 17 you can drink beer wine and cider in a pub or restaurant if an adult orders it with a table meal.

There is no problem with an adult going and buying booze, taking it home and allowing his/her 6 year old kid to drink it. There is, however a problem, if the 6 year old pays the parent for it.

Given the above, it really does not make sense to refuse to sell to someone who has a kid with them. But, most of the people at checkouts don't make most of the time.

The penguin because booze gives you happy feet.

MP wants Welsh text on ID cards

It's simple

The cards could be issued with any language on them. Let people request what they want at the time of issue/application.

But, if you are stopped by the police, customs, immigration, mothers against normal people activists, RSPCA, etc., your interview must be conducted in the language that the card is printed in. If this means that the card holder has to wait hours and hours while an interpreter is found, so be it.

Judges: Don't know the law? It's understandable

@don't patch, re-issue

Ah, you mean that you would like a government run by engineers in place of failed lawyers, failed accademics, failed accountants and failed doctors? A good idea but, when it comes to it, how many engineers would really want to do it?

World's fastest production car to gain electric twin

This is what they are talking about

They have managed to demonstrate a battery pack that will run a vehicle at 60mph for 2 hours on a 10 min charge.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070530005396

It is a 35kWh pack that is charged wiith a 250kW charger.

A quick calculation

Assuming that we can pull 20 amps from a 110V outlet and that storage is 100% efficient, we could store enough energy to generate 500HP for 3.5 seconds. Just enough to wind it up to 60mph.

We need a streaming pile of BS icon.

Breakthrough paint blocks top-end spectrum

@"Radio Waves"

Oh dear. X-rays are between about 10^17 to 10^18 Hz.. So you were out by around 10000000 rather than 100. UV is around 10^16 Hz with visible light at about 10^15 Hz.

At present around 180 GHz is used for imaging. The paint would be useful for rendering surfaces non-reflective.

Boffin seeks $300,000 to build eight-wheel 230mph EV

@Eight wheels

Well, just a thought, 8 wheels 80hp each that is about 0.48 MegaWatts with a heavy right foot.

That is going to be a rather heavy battery bank or two. I would imagine that the batteries are in two banks above the two sets of 4 wheels with the centre of mass between pairs of wheels.in each case. This would surely improve stability, especially under high acceleration. There may also be a problem with weight and wheel bearings.

Internet to Obama: 'Pass the joint'

To sum up

We want drugs, sex, fast trains and no electricity. The first two I get, but what happened to fast cars and rock and roll ?

LibDem cheeky boy rides to Segway's rescue

Electric Monks

I recall the idea of an electric monk from a Douglas Adams book, "The Long Dark Teatime of The Sole' I think. I just imagined a whole flock of rural vicars wizzing around on these things and thought of electric vicars. A large bible nailed to the handles would allow them to read the lesson as they crashed from house to house leaving a trail of spilled tea and squashed cucumber sandwiches in their wakes. Oh, I have just realized that I have been seeing the Dick Emery vicar with the teath riding one of the things.

UK schools chief begs for Home Access scheme cash

@Lionel Baden

Your son is 1.7 months old? Wot an odd way of measuring time. It is of course 51 days for a 30 day month but we haven't had one of those recently. It could be 50.202003 days if you are using lunar months but that gets a bit silly with all those micro seconds and so on.

Being 0.57 centuries old, the memory goes a bit, but I am sure that at that age my daughter would have eaten a mouse rather than used it for anything useful.

New York mulls terrorist cell phone jamming

All been thought of before

All digital mobile standards have provissions for groups or classes of mobiles that are intended to control or limit access. So, limiting network usage to emergency services only over an area is no problem.

New York needs to talk to the network operators.

Motor quango thumbsup for satnav speed restrictions

Splat

A little while ago, an aircraft in Australia decided that it was flying at the wrong altitude and splattered the passengers all over the ceiling. Now, aircraft systems tend to be engineered to slightly higher standards than the average car. So how long would it be before a car decided that it needed to slow from 70 to 30 on a crowded motorway?

A tombstone is the obvious result..

Photography: Yes, you have rights

If the police have done nothing wrong.....

They have nothing to be afraid of.

Apple ejects iBoobs

@ iweiner

I wonder if it would stand up to the abuse.

Indulge your fecal fantasies with a doll that craps

Not new

My daughter had one of these things several years a go. I must admit that hers kept quiet about the whole process rather than announcing it with pride.

A word of warning to parents who think that it is cute. When your kid decides to see if it can eat other stuff (the doll not the kid), you are in for regular bouts of surgery to unplug the ugly looking thing (sorry the doll not your kid!).

IWF rethinks its role

@ShaggyDog

"If this material is so corrupting that looking at it makes you a slavering paedo, how come the staff at IWF are somehow immune ?"

What proof do you have that the IWF is not staffed by slavering paedos?

Junk science and booze tax - a study in spin

Validation of models.

In the main, my experience is with modeling physical porcesses. I have, however, looked at modeling of human behaviour when it comes to telecom's traffic.

With any model, the really interesting bit is the validation of the model. To do this with this type of model, it is best to go back in history and use the model to predict the last 50 years. They have not done this. The model validation (section 4.2 page 165) takes about half a page. The model, thay say, agrees with the Home Office analysis for 2008. Wow, what a surprise.

I have only had a quick look, but it looks as though they have used brand price sensitivity to come to conclusions on overall consumption price sensitivity. This is a bit iffy because of the adictive nature of booze. At one end of the spectrum we have the full blown alcoholic and at the othe we have Granny who can only get a good nights sleep after a couple of glasses of sherry. With a price change, I can see granny going for a cheaper brand but not giving up or going to a single glass.

Overall, I think that the report contains sufficient BS to baffle most political brains.

Harvard prof slams US nut allergy hysteria

Alergies good

I am not alergic to anything edible. This has ruined my life because I eat everything I can lay my hands on and have turned into a fat b*st*rd.

Just off to get a seafood cocktail in peanut sauce.

Lego terrorist threatens democracy

Ban Lego men (and women, I ain't sexist)

Mohammed Shafiq is getting upset about the wrong thing. He should be attacking every Lego figure, official or not. Islam says that the God of the Jews, Allah as he is called in Arabic, has forbiden anyone from creating an image of a person, animal or any of His creations. This is why Islamic art revolves about using ornate scripts.

"As a parent myself, I'm going to teach my children respect for the law and respect for each and every community." says Mohammed on his blog. Does that include respect for Islamic law and, does he therefore not allow his children to play with dolls?

Networked multipack cruise missiles in successful test

Creap up on it

and drop a tin foil hat over it's satellite antenna.

Goodnight network node.

That's what an alien would do.

Human rights court rules UK DNA grab illegal

Bring The People to Justice

Smith said: "DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month, and I am disappointed by the European Court of Human Rights' decision. The Government mounted a robust defence before the Court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice."

I am sure that she is right and the use of DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime. I fail to see, however, how having my DNA or fingerprints would help the fight. I didn't do nuffink, so having my details would only slow down the search for the actual criminal. It is, of course, possible that the system could produce a false possitive and identify me. If this was the case, plod would be able to spend lots of money flying to the US to ask me what I was doing last Thursday.

She goes on to talk about "bringing people to justice". Now, bringing "criminals" to justice is fine, but "people"?. Either this woman has a really poor grasp of the English language and is unable to identify, with a single word, the group that needs to be brought to justice or she is preparing the population to believe that all people need to be brought to justice. Or maybe she just gets her words in the wrong order and means bringing justice to people. Nah! I don't think so either.

The government response to the European ruling is interesting. If I were to subject my employees to a set of rules that they did not like and thought were against the law, they could go to court to get a judgement. If that judgement went against me and my response was, "well, I don't like that so I will think about it for a bit", would that be OK? This is just what the government is doing, and to be honest, did they really think that Europe would support them?

Battlestar Galactica prequel shuns space, spaceships

I gave up when

Starbuck turned into a girl. Couldn't they have renamed her "Stardoe"?

Why is information delivery so bloody hard?

We are getting worse.

Many years ago a company of any size had something called a registry. This was run by a registrar. This is where all the company data and information was stored. Any project/job/activity generated data in one form or another and this was stored in the registry. Every project/job/activity had time, hence money, allocated to producing the final reports and data. The registrar made sure that this all worked and that all the data was correctly referenced etc etc.

Along came electronic storage and the firm belief that it would all take care of itself. It doesn't. It doesn't matter how clever or automated the system is, it requires a responsible human being to make sure that it works and that everyone behaves correctly. This of course costs money. Try persuading accountants that you need a registrar or a librarian to look after company data and information when it is all stored on hard drives and not in filing cabinets or on book shelves. The storage is invariably a mess and difficult to search.

Searching data and generating information from it takes time, skill and a knowledge of the subject matter. Many years ago I remember a young engineer being sent from one department to another to find some urgently needed sky hooks. He was gone for a whole day before he came back to ask what a sky hook looked like. My wife tells me that young nurses were sent to the stores for a long stand. Companies are now full of people doing just this but to afraid or stupid to ask a person the all important question. The point is, if people are searching for something that doesn't exist or that they have no hope of recognising when they do find it, any system will fail.

So, we need people to make sure that the filing and storage works and follows a set of rules. We also need the old grey hairs that can tell people what they are really looking for and guide them in the right dirrection. If we didn't need this we wouldn't need librarians and index systems in libraries and we wouldn't need teachers. Just pile the books up in a room, give the students the final exam papers and say go for it, you've got three years.

UK.gov says extreme porn isn't illegal if you delete it...

Or

"portray activity that threatens harm to life or limb,"

Shouldn't this be life AND limb?

"involves sex with a corpse or animal."

Is this an inclusive or exclusive OR? My friend, who is Welsh, needs to know.

Lapdancing 'not sexually stimulating', MPs hear

@Flawed argument

Hey Mole, that gives me a good idea.

How about tests for the clubs. Fit testers with an "angle of dangle meter" and let them into the club. The angle measured is 180 straight down and 0 straight up. Any angle of 90 or less is a fail for the club.

Paris because she would make a great angle of dangle meter maid.

HP breaks Japanese excessive packaging record

That's nothing!

When I was a lad, computers came in boxes so big that we lived in one in middle of road

DARPA wargamer calls for US X-Men superplane fleet

Stealth transports need

Stealth parachutes, like this one http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/parachute.html

Net pharmacies raided in nine countries

Online Viagra

I received an e-mail pushing "soft chewable viagra" yesterday. Looks like they have started to loose the plot.

Retro piracy - Should the Royal Navy kick arse?

Why not pretend to be French........

and sell arms to the pirates? We must have lots of stuff that doesn't work and is more dangerous to the user than the person they are pointing it at.

Euro court blocks Lego trademark bid

@This could go horribly bad

Rego would have to be made out of meramine with red based paint and be chewable!

The icon, watch out for the rittle yerrow ones.

DARPA: Self-repairing, learning kill-robot tech is go

@A likely story

OMG self replicating chocks!

Anal whitening biz drops one million clams for Vibrators.com

@ Big Pete

An old friend of mine used to announce, in very public places, that there were three things that every man had done. Have a woman, have a wank, and have a look up his own arse with a mirror. I have often wondered how many men went away in search of a mirror after hearing this. Obviously some did.

The vision of some old dude stood in the shower with stuff to make his grey hair go brown and stuff to make his brown arse go grey has popped into my mind. I think that I will stay with grey hair and brown arse.

@Well bugger me

No thanks, it's the wrong colour.

Police vet live music, DJs for 'terror risk'

@Jesus wept!

This sort of nonsense would not fly in the US.

The city that I live in would require a permit for an event in a public park but this is just in the nature of a tax and to allow the booking of a public venue. The permit also holds the organiser responsible for clearing trash after the event. They certainly don't want to know what sort of music or who is playing.

The outcome of this sort of heavy handed regulation will be civil disobedience, eventually on a massive scale. You can push Brits about and piss them off for a long time and then, one day, they will stand fast and be pushed no further. When it happens, and it will, it will not be good to be a politician or senior plod.

I left years ago.

Wi-Fi phobes hijack disability legislation

Have a larf

Come on, have a larf. This is new Mexico where people live in underground houses, they have Roswell and the city of Hot Springs that renamed itself "Truth or Consequences" after the well known TV show. They also have Los Alamos and the site of the first atomic explosion, the White Sands misile range and the VLA radio telescope. No wonder half the population is nuts.

AT&T cops to Jesus Phone-as-modem app

@@Stop IT

Call it the Eve phone. She used an apple to con Adam and it's been downhill ever since.

Swedish transsexuals offered prosthetic todgers

@Get with the program....

To my knowledge strapadictomy has been around for at least 40 years.

btw, does anyone else have a problem working out if a transsexual man was a real man and is now a fake woman or was a real woman and is now a fake man?

Police collar kid for Wi-Fi pinching

Primary job of the police.

I always thought that the primary job of the police was to prevent crime. Detecting crime is a secodary activity when they have failed.

I remember, many years ago, plod used to go around and check that shop doors and so on were locked at night. Maybe they could move with the times and have a number of cars outfitted with unsecured wifi detectors (not really very difficult to do). They could then track them down and tell the owners.