Posts by Jim 275 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
That the Phreakster always seems to be the first to comment on a Cade Metz story? Maybe it's because of the author's propensity to submit late and this coincides with this particular commentator's Reg habit? Nah! Why waste a good conspiracy theory.
Dontcha just find yourself feeling sorry for someone so filled with hate (or just hopelessly deranged)?
Could people please grow up and stop sounding like a bunch of twats, we are only talking about bits of niche hardware.
@George
Why would anyone compare a smartphone and "ultrabasic" in terms of sales? One is a voice communication device supposed to sell in the 100 millions and the other is a high-priced toy that can also make voice calls.
@Matt Bryant
I looked at the BB Pearl but the sales people warned me off it so I got the Curve instead (same price). Since talking to actual Pearl owners, the majority appear to wish they had bought the Curve too.
To compare the iPhone and Curve would be a good one to make, if they weren't designed for different market segments. One is a great media player with a mediocre phone while the other is a great email device with a half decent phone. They seem to have a few things in common though. Neither can compete on the other's strength, both are EDGE and both have crap cameras (from my experience anyway).
"Some people may find OSX easy to use, but why the shock and flaming when other people don't?"
The flaming usually comes about when dodgy claims are made like
"Nothing is where you would expect, the stupid 1 button mouse approach and having to constantly go to the top left of the screen for menus means everything takes twice as long and the whole thing just feels like eye candy is more important than usability."
I've been using macs in a 'real' job for the past 5 years (since v10.1) and have always used a two button mouse and guess what, you get very similar functionality to Windows.
Virtually everything is where you expect it to be (assuming you know that you are not using Windows) though some things don't exist in the UI, which can be infuriating.
I rarely make a visit to the top left because everything there (excepting Sys Prefs and Location) is easier to do with the keyboard. Most of the ctrl functions available in windows are there though you use the cmd/apple key instead. The only difference is that you always use the cmd key so no changing to the alt key for closing an app or the shift key for task switching. Personally, I find the majority of OS tasks take less time than on XP.
Horses for courses obviously but I know my preference - in terms of OS tasks.
Having said so much in support of OS X, I admit that I am not looking at upgrading to Leopard any time soon. It never looked that impressive on paper and seems even less so in practice.
Why are these overly emotive, overly generalised, lacking in fact posts always anon? Shame really, as there are some very valid points made in there somewhere...
And to add to the could/n't care less debate, why do merkins say "lucked out" when they mean "to have been fortunate"?
Yes, the devices use steam reforming but the idea is to combine this process with another heat system, eg domestic water heater. Doing this should provide greater energy efficiency, and so less CO2 production, than if the two process were conducted independently. It sounds like a fairly standard application of CHP to me and this invariably leads to more efficient use of fuel energy.
Still, H2 has a crap energy density. The most promising research I have heard about, with regard to H2 ICs, was to produce the H2 in situ (almost) by cracking a high energy density fuel within the 'carb'. I seem to recall that vegetable oil was the fuel of choice.
Nuclear the solution? More akin to cracking an egg into your radiator to seal a leak - short term and a bugger to clean up.
>>are you implying that 7/7 was justified?
>No, they had a vote in the democracy they attacked.
>What they were trying to do was force a minority viewpoint
>over and above the majority will by the use of violence.
Sorry, but what does the nationality of these idiots matter? The mindset was that a democratic nation (UK) was acting against a multi-national organisation (Islam or "their people"). So, by claiming that to attack democracy you must attack the people, you are providing a justification for the acts of 9/11 and 7/7, no matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel.
However, it is unlikely that you can defeat a democracy by obliterating population. A much more effective method is to subvert democracy through rapid population growth of your minority - once you are the majority then you control the democracy. It is very hard, in a 'civilised' society, to limit someone's right to reproduce. I currently live in a country where this very technique has been successfully used (it can clearly be seen when comparing political rhetoric and demographic data). It is just a little unfortunate that the country is now hopelessly over-populated...
PS Given your point about heads of state, why is no fuss made about the rediculous amounts of resources used to protect completely expendable people? Personally, I feel that tax payers money could find much better uses than excessive personal security of expendable people.
These choices today are about saving state not speeding up boot time. Splashtop is more of a cut down OS for doing basic stuff fast without waiting for the crud to load, I like the idea. I wonder if it utilises power management so that components not in use are powered down, eg network isn't necessary if you are not accessing the Internet.
There are obvious issues with storage of personal settings, such as bookmarks, chat transcipts, whatever though not having access to storage means that virus protection is less important, which can be a big boost for Windows machine.
I never knew that Asus made iBooks though... you live and learn
Just read the BBC version of this story and noticed a couple of things
In this article, the analyst says "There's a distinct possibility that the cost of the e-passport could rise again, as the government seeks to pass on the additional costs of the second generation passport to the citizen." This is interesting considering that the the BBC claim "Passport costs have gone up since 2003 to pay for the new biometric passports and future security measures." So does that mean that the IPS has forgotten that it has already charged for the 2nd Gen document and double dip?
Also, missing from this article was a quote from 'an IPS spokesman' that is quite worrying - "The ID card will enable you to confirm your identity in a secure, convenient way in a range of transactions with public and private sector organisations that you cannot with an ePassport,"
Is this spec creep? I thought the idea of an ID card was that it was a 'passport lite', ie a form of identification only. Are we now being told that the ID card is to hold far more personal info than is necessary just to confirm identity?
@Jerry
When making a comment like "Mate, you are so wrong!" you should read the post properly. I didn't see anything that suggested that hydro was slow reacting so why was he wrong?
And what does pumped hydro have to do with supplying base load? That would be insane. The whole ethos of pumped hydro is that base load (ultra slow reacting capacity) can be kept online during low demand periods just to move water. This energy can then be returned rapidly during spikes, eg half time in a footy match. The only effect on base is that it keeps more online for longer, nothing to do with avoiding extra base.
"The rest is higher cost shorter response systems such as hydro, gas turbine, and some fossil fuel systems."
Maybe you know something I don't but I have never heard of a GT running on anything but fossil fuels (methane, oil, even coal). Maybe you mean CCGT but these are not fast response as the boilers take time to get online.
@ A J Stiles
Firstly, you do not need to run at 3000rpm to produce 50Hz. By increasing the number of pole pairs in the alternator you can decrease the speed, ie 2 poles = 3000, 4 poles = 1500, 6 poles = 1000, etc.
Secondly, there is a wonderful invention called variable pitch blades. This allows you to alter the power transfer from wind to blade in much the same way as altering the flow of fuel in an IC or GT engine.
Back to @ Jerry
" Distances are huge; transmission costs are very high (and lossy)".
Compared to either end of the circuit, transmission losses (the major portion of cost) are pretty minor - even over large distances. If you really want to talk about losses then best look at the power station. A coal fired plant manages to convert about 45% max of the chemical potential in the fuel into electricity and LWR nuclear manages a meager 1.6% utilisation of fuel potential. This makes the 93% efficiency of the transmission line look pretty amazing.
@ All the "the wind doesn't always blow", pro-nuke brigade.
I hope you are aware that the current designs of LWR nuke plants are required to shutdown (zero power) for 2 months every 3 years? That requires quite a bit of planning and backup capacity in itself. Also, should there be a scram at full load (not uncommon), it can take days for a nuke plant to get back up to capacity. Given that nuke has to be base load (slowest response generating plant) then there is quite a bit of redundancy required here.
My personal view is that if the drive for 'the bomb' had not pumped so much tax payers moeny in to nuclear power then we would have a great deal more choices now for electricity generation. As it is, we see governments panicking and backing any old half-arsed project (including wind and new nuclear build) without any real understanding of the ramifications that those decisions have.
@ Jeffypoo
IIRC the kids weren't just in the cockpit but in control of the plane... after disengaging the autopilot. I think one of the last sounds on the voice recorder was the pilot getting back in his seat!
@ John A Blackley
Get a grip man, this wasn't yer average flight. It was a charter with rich people on board so it was pretty likely that no-one was going to do anything adverse. Maybe you should invest in a large amount of cotton wool for your next foray in to the outside world...
I think 45p is pretty reasonable for a CC transaction considering what other organisations charge these days - try buying a ticket on trainline.co.uk these days and they will charge a couple a quid.
Also, doesn't it feel like a little bit of marketing by applying a fixed CC charge? Who is going to pay 1p and 45 times that in CC fee? Isn't it quite likely that people are going to think "Hmm, if the CC charge is 45p then I should, at least, bung a couple of quid at the artist"?
As for the concept that Radiohead have put forward, it will probably work for them but what about the start-ups/little guys? I think it was suggested above that a central repository of free music that includes editorials and listener feedback to guide searchers could be a winner... if done right of course (however that may be).
PS Gumby? All I can imaging is wellies, braces and hanky on head... sorry
Sorry, where are you going?
OS: One that doesn't ring home before I can use it.
DVDs: Plenty, many regions, regionless player/ripper.
Media Players: Most of them, you know they play non-DRMed media too?
MP3 Player: Yup, plays certain DRMed content plus 100% of non-DRMed content (though not all formats).
So, yes, I do live with devices that support DRM but they are also quite happy playing stuff that hasn't been DRMed. Only a frickin idiot would buy/use a player that ONLY works with DRM.
And there appears to be no problems with the disks, the problem is with software on said disks that screws the consumer's player. I'm sorry, but it is up to the supplier to provide media that works on my 'standard' player not for me to waste my time playing catch-up to 'fix' my player.
The vid piece opens with the anchor bitchin about PC repairs not fixing the actual problem but people seem to put up with shite service from other trades all the time. Plumbers, builders, car mechanics, whatever. Who hasn't been fleeced at least once?
The fact is that if you don't understand how something works (fairly intimately) then you will get fleeced - no magic, no mystery, no news!
"Free is overpriced?"
What NBC is offering is not "free", if it were then there would be zero adverts. Adverts are the "price" you pay for "free".
A year or so ago, I got chatting to what turned out to be a fairly senior droid at NBC. All he talked about was advertising revenue. He seemed to be of the impression that, rather than a provider of entertainement, NBC's role was as a generator of ad revenue. He didn't seem to get my reason for not owning a tv at all. That being that US tv is so ad focused that it makes my brain hurt trying to concentrate on the actual entertainment. His only reply was "but who is going to pay for the programming?", a fair point were the world really to be simply black and white.
Sorry, but WTF do you mean that we have to have base load?
Base load demand is a result of a desire to run stuff 24/7/365 - often because there are serious financial/energy repercussions of starting and stopping processes or just because you (non-specific) can't be bothered turning your DSL on or off. But there is actually no intrinsic need to provide base load capacity, this is a problem created when generation capacity has a poor response time to load changes, like nuclear. The ex-CEGB even had to stimulate demand for base load capacity to keep the nuclear plant running, think Economy-7.
With regard to Greenpeace, there seems to be a lot are wankers on here who don't actually know anything about them so just make stuff up. Greenpeace is not anti-energy use, their policy is to encourage people to reduce energy use where possible and to encourage governments and people to have a rational approach to future energy generation. The current push for nuclear is not rational, until a serious solution is provided for waste management - since the 50s, this solution has been 'only' 20 years away...
And please take note that to group all 'green' organisations into a single entity is disingenuous as, while many groups agree on a few issues, there are serious disagreements between most 'green' groups about many issues. Take the following from the first comment.
"They don't want fossil fuel power and we should use renewables. But then you try to create wind farms, tidal barriers they have cry that we are ruining the landscape."
This apparent dichotomy is merely an illusion created by artificially grouping non-related organisations to prove a fallacious argument.
You do $5k of damage and risk up to 10 years plus $250k fine? Seems a tad excessive to me. Was that thought up by the FIA? Or maybe the damage figure is missing a few noughts?
And having carried out the corrective work, why is the company not sure how much it actually cost? $70k-120k is a pretty ambiguous range for something that has already happened...
Firstly, let’s get the facts really straight.
1. McLaren were not penalised for possession of 780 pages of Ferrari documents. At the original ‘trial’, it was judged that it was impossible to determine whether McLaren had gained any advantage or examined the documents in any detail.
2. McLaren has been found guilty of receiving and (potentially) using data from a Ferrari employee. Nigel Stepney, allegedly (criminal proceedings still outstanding), passed sensitive Ferrari data to Mike Coughlan @ McLaren, both unilaterally and on demand (according to De La Rosa's emails). So there is a clear flow of confidential information between a number of employees of the Ferrari and McLaren teams.
3. Despite the ranting of Max Moseley (family trait?) there is no evidence that any other member of the team had any knowledge of these transactions. Ron Dennis has actually claimed that he was the person who made the FIA aware of the critical emails as soon as he became aware of their existence during the Hungarian GP weekend.
As for the impact of a $100m fine on McLaren, their stated profit in 2005 was a shade under $5m (off $450-500m turnover) so it would seem that the ‘actual’ $30m fine would make a significant dent in their operations as they would have around $25m (5-6% of budget) less to play with.
Incidentally, the FIA has stated that 50% of the fine will be redistributed to the other teams, the rest going into the ‘good causes’ fund. This is a neat piece of accounting given that had McLaren not competed then there would have been an additional $70m (rather than $50m) in the prize pot for the other teams.
My own view is that McLaren got caught doing something that every other team either does or would do if given the opportunity (see 2). The fact that they had 780 pages of confidential Ferrari documents just makes it look different. Strangely, Toyota being founding in possession of several CDs worth of confidential Ferrari data in 2003 was handled very differently. Maybe this was because this was theft by ex rather than current (at the time) employees or maybe just that Toyota weren’t a threat competitively.
I also find it sad that Luca Di Montezemelo stated, before the hearing, that he would be quite happy to win in the courts. At least Mario Thiessen, of BMW Sauber, had the good grace to say that he would have preferred to have taken second place by merit.
This bit gets me too. It doesn't cost that much to rent a decent copier/scanner for a couple of weeks.
I can't believe that a chief designer would get to that position being too dumb or lazy that they would take confidential data to a copy shop. Did he not read what happened to Gary Glitter at PC World FFS?
"admin-level" in OSX isn't the same as root. AFAICT, you get sudo privilege and access to files/folders in the admin group so you could do some damage but it is limited.
Obviously, more damage can be done once you have responded to a prompt for your password but who would be dumb enough to do that? Oh, wait...
@Tom
No, the idea is to have the latest 'cool' device cos that means something (allegedly). Please stop flogging the "Apple kit is really expensive" dead horse. It has been demonstrated that the 2 year cost of the iPhone/AT&T contract is comparable with other handset/network deals, even at the original handset cost.
@Walter Brown
Worked fine for me... maybe you should find something more amusing than just putting i in front of everything. You might even be funny.
Yawn...
Maybe I'm being a bit dim but this unit connects via a LAN not WLAN connection so why would you need to enter a WEP/WPA key on the handset? Isn't the radio bit DECT not Wi-Fi.
And just because I hate being 'taught' how to speak/write my own language @Levente Szileszky - Learn English (hint - what is spoken in England). It may also suprise you that the shortened form or mathematics is maths (no lisping at the back)
So your case is?
Appears to me that if the word fanboy (or whatever l33t derivative) is mentioned then Apple must be sh!te.
1. Apple kit is no worse nor *significantly* more expensive than its direct competitors. It is also not a paradigm shift.
2. Marmite tastes like salty vomit (though still tastes better than Vegemite).
So Apple fights for the little guy? Seems that a few here have already pointed out, by way of defence, that Apple are a 'business' and, as such, are out to make money so stop whining and either buy or not.
As for the "the RIAA made us do it" defence? I'm sure the decision to disable the 'use as ringtone' option was made by Apple. Pretty crappy but as there is a work around then it becomes irrelevent for many.
And I have to agree that Cade Metz & Phreakey must be the same person (or good friends), else how does WP always seem to get one of the 1st comments up?
Nuclear is expensive because it costs a huge amount to build, even more to dismantle and the fuel has to be sealed indefinitely (chemical toxicity) at an undisclosed (uncalculated?) cost.
And what exactly do you mean by "greenies"? This broad brush approach is used as FUD to dismiss any unwanted idea put forward. At the top of the comments it is suggested that the "greenies" don't want wind power but that is not true. The RSPB are scared for the birdies and the NIMBYs are scared about their view but these are not environmental organisations, they represent a couple of special interests only.
"@Chip - Chernobyl was an ancient design of reactor, which had improper maintenance, basically untrained staff and a ridiculously bad disaster response followed the accident. Modern PWG reactors are completely different in design - it's like comparing throwing gasoline on a live flame to an internal combustion engine. This is 15 minutes research."
Chernobyl was run in a manner considered 'adequate' right up to the point of catastophic failure. In a similar way to the Besse-Davis (Ohio) reactor (almost). The problem with nuclear reactor safety is that, like anti-terror measures, it is based on what could imaginably go wrong (and hindsight). This wouldn't be so bad if the imaginations involved weren't also required to consider the bottom line.
I'm quite amused that those commenters who are pro-nuclear appear to be the same as those who claim every pro-environment move by the government is just another unnecessary "green tax".
So, why does no-one every question why the government is so pro-nuclear? An industry that has received trillions in tax payers money over the last 50-60 years and has managed to produce a generating technology with an efficiency of 1.67% (2% if PUREX is used*) compared to coal (40-45%) and CCGT (50+%) - efficiency being a measure of actual electrical output from fuel potential?
Any new build will be subsidised (to 100%?) by the government (tax payer) as will decommisioning and spent fuel handling. No doubt the revenue from generation will go to a private operator. Also, the price per kwhr fro the consumer will be maintained artificially high so that said private operator can actually make a profit - nuclear is the most expensive method of electricity generation.
There is estimated that there is 85 years worth of usable uranium deposits remain - assuming that demand does not increase...
The other potential source of fuel is thorium 233, which is abundent. The only problem is that Th233 isn't that great a fuel on its own. The real potential is that Th233 can be bred into U235, in much the same way that U238 can be bred into P239. Now, I don't wasnt to appear too negative here but where are all these breeder reactors? The very 1st reactor to provide electrical power was a fast breeder (EBR-II) and that was 50+ years ago. After many failed attempts to bring FBR to the masses (biggest failure being SuperPhenix) we are left with two test FBRs - Phenix in France and Monju (when it's not on fire) in Japan.
It seems that FBR is in the same boat as Fusion, it may work but no-one knows when. I am not of the opinion that we should expect future technology to save us. We must work with what is available now (or definitly commercially viable within 5 years). Strangely I'm not a religious man either - go figure.
Nuclear, while a necessary stop gap is not the future. Any commital to new build must be accompanied by a real commitment to alternate, renewable, sources of energy. Ironically, if governments for the last 50 years had not been actively discouraging alternatives we may have been in a different situation now. Maybe that had something to do with early reactors being primarily used for the production of plutonium for weapons...
*Current light water reactors utilise 5% of the potential fission energy in its fuel over the 9 years said fuel is in the reactor. PUREX reprocessing allows a further 1% to be utilised. A typical reactor has a thermal efficiency of 33% - 3MWth = 1MWe.
"As to "kinda useful for point and click", so is a touch screen or a stylus or, dare I suggest, the tab key and enter key."
I wouldn't dare if I were you.
"point & click" is a UI control method that provides instant access to any window/field/control that is visible on the screen.
The tab key provides an alternate control method that (usually) relies on a preconfigured sequence to 'move' about the screen.
Do not confuse function with method :-)
"Chemically equivalent to demineralised water?? With a slight hint of legionairres disease! Yum.."
Sorry? Have you looked at a modern AC unit? The 'output' is effectively distilled water, created by condensation from the de-humidifying effect. Admittedly, older large units have a water circuit that can be a perfect environment for legionella, if the chemistry is improperly maintained - but that is not what was being proposed.
@James Anderson
I think you will find that "the Jim Bloke" forgot his <sarcasm> tags.
@ those who decry drugs and their relationship with slavery.
Firstly, if child slavery really gets to you then I would suggest that you stop eating (non-fair trade) chocolate. Around 70% of the worlds cocoa is produced in the Ivory Coast, where child slavery on cocoa plantations is rife. Then start on your clothing.
There is much talk about the horrors of narcotic sales - it funds terrorism, it causes slavery, etc. These are problems related directly to organised crime, narcotics are peddled by this scum because there is a demand that cannot be met legally. Legalise and these problems cease though other, social, problems will follow. I seem to remember an analysis a few years back that showed that, while the US spent $5 billion on trying to stop drugs, a legal and modestly taxed drugs industry could have produced billions of revenue for the government (and saved $5bill in the process).
This meshes quite well with the study that demonstrated that a life-long smoker in the UK is paying an amount in tobacco duty that would not only cover the NHS costs incurred by smoking related illness for that individual but by several times, in effect subsidising the healthcare of non-smokers. You listening "Voice Of Reason" ?
Drugs are not all good though, I had a friend at university who suffered a severe paranoid episode after a rather heavy night on the puff (not skunk btw). His disappeared for a couple of years and then surfaced as a shadow of his former self. Then again he was very much the exception among the many I knew that partook.
Legalising narcotics is certainly not a panacea but removing a source of income from people traffickers and generating a modest tax income that could offset the cost of narcotic victim care is surely preferrable.
Can we add this to the 'bringing up the Nazis' criterion that the debate is over once this line of 'reasoning' has been deployed? Mr Barrett, I'm looking at you.
As for "Mendes", I'm guessing you mean De Menezes and I'm sure he WOULD have preferred a taser to several hollow point rounds for doing nothing out of the ordinary. And being in the UK validly. Just how many Daily Mail readers are there commenting here?
Oh and Clarkson, surely it would have been more entertaining to watch HIM being tasered...
I see nothing wrong with this line. The featured enterprise is merely a very expensive fairground ride. Unlike cars, sea and air travel, there is no actual use for this mode of transport (think Yorkshire Airlines). Even the price tag is too low to generate the necessary profit for more research in to future service expansion (orbital and beyond).
So it would seem that Mr Page has it spot on with that sentence, a bit of fun at an exceedingly high price.
Also, be aware that class and wealth, while not mutually exclusive, do not correlate (in the UK anyway). Becoming wealthy does not raise your social class, ever heard the derogatory term "nouveau riche"?
So environmental awareness now denotes communism?
ROTFLMFAO!
Seriously, get out a bit more and try reading some scientific literature (not a report on scientific work) before formulating your philosophies, rather than The Economist or Forbes.
"A program pitching the alarmists\eco-loonies against the skeptics - now that would be worth watching."
No it wouldn't. Everyone knows how it would go. The eco-loonies would get overly emotional, start contradicted themselves and end up looking ridiculous.
Now if you replaced eco-loonies with a group of climate scientists, encompassing all the different fields of climate science, then you might find that the it is the skeptics who look ridiculous as they constantly trot out dated scientific work or erroneous interpretations of current work.
@Stuart Halliday
You're not serious, right? You buy a portable music player to just sit within 100ft of an access point? Sounds a bit weird.
@All the knockers
I don't see why this wouldn't sell, there are plenty of people who seem to have bought the phone primarily as a 'cool' ipod. So now you get the choice of a 'cool' ipod or, for $100 more, a 'cool' ipod + phone (that also does PIM/mail directly - rather than webmail). You can sneer all you like about ridiculous Apple prices (even though it is often untrue) but the company seems to have a pretty good handle on its demographic - more money than sense ;-)
One of the biggest problem I see with the discussion here is that the neutrals actually aren’t. The denial plan is to maintain the status quo and the neutral viewpoint is…?
Actually, the neutral plan is to wait for independent scientific research to provide repeatable, experimental proof. Two aspects of this statement are impossible.
1. There is no such thing as independent scientific research. The funding has to come from somewhere and, no matter what safeguards are put in place, at least one person will claim that the source of the funding influenced the results.
2. When dealing with global climate there is no way you can find repeatable, experimental proof. Even if you could find another identical planet that was a few centuries younger than earth, what level of chaotic variation is considered to be within experimental boundaries?
@ Matt Siddall
“Before crucifying our economies to conform to meaningless targets…”
Many estimates of cost suggest that paying now would be much less painful than covering the charges accrued from doing nothing.
@Said
“In the 1970s, 'scientists' were telling us that in 30 years' time England will be a snow-covered tundral country due to the dust that we create, that blocks the sun's rays”
During the 50s smog was a serious problem. This was caused by particulates (dust) in the lower atmosphere and to counter this problem a series of acts were passed to improve the quality of the air. The main push of these acts was to decrease the amount of particulates (dust) produced from human sources. One could suggest that ‘clean air’ acts were what caused the scientists to get it wrong. If so, this would be the greatest evidence of anthropogenic climate forcing yet produced.
To be honest, all current ecological problems (real or imagined) are caused by over-population. Clean water supplies are dwindling, as is useable topsoil. Without a fairly drastic decrease in global population, any action to counter global warming will be futile. Any followers of the church of Stein will no doubt be horrified by that analysis but, to be honest, if Islam wishes to conquer by numbers then let them. They will inherent a wasteland.
To comment on the story, i don't get the "...to criticise Antenna 3 for failing to point out it had to register on Wikipedia before making its edits to the online encyclopedia." bit.
If I read this correctly, it says that the TV company was wrong not to advertise the fact it was going to 'vandalise' the data. Wasn't the point of the experiment to make anonymous edits to text?
Anyway, back to the 'real' topic.
Good roads = better drivers? Bollocks. Good roads = faster driving = more serious accidents when errors are made. Maybe if driving a car was not treated as an immutable right then there would be fewer vehicles on the road and therefore fewer accidents (in all probability).
Re: 1588 and "...we know we were not as 'heavily armed' as we needed to be, and we know we lost; that's all." English teaching is that the Spanish were TOO heavily armed, which in turn limited their strategic choices and defeat followed.
The worrying thing for me is that with the loss of CDs then I lose my current 'master' quality copy. It's bad enough that production ethics have dropped so that source quality has dropped correspondingly but at least with a CD you have a pretty good archive copy that you can encode as the mood takes.
By the way, please stop quoting 20kHz as the top end of recovered signals from a CD. If you have a really good A/D converter with a truely awesome LPF you can achieve this but you are not gonna find this in consumer grade kit.
A 741 in a CD player, LOL. Those things were useless even in basic analogue circuit design by the end of the 80s, I would never dream of sticking one in an audio circuit!
So many people here are pointing out that you can save more power by actually turning the socket off/unplugging but they fail to realise that the vast majority can't even be arsed to do that.
@Ken Hagan
My understanding was that the tube was kept hot because the manufacturers were too cheap to spring for a second transformer to run the electronics. They just tapped off the fly-back converter that produced the multi kV for the accelerator circuit.
Late to this but couldn't help read a list of almost 100 comments ;-)
I'm quite amazed that no-one has picked up on a couple of posters here, namely Luke and Marcelo Rodrigue. RPM is a measure of Angular Velocity, so if the rpm changes then so has the angular velocity - 1 rpm = PI rad/min after all.
As the first poster, there is nothing there to indicate that they are referring to that fact that audio CDs are read at CLV rather than CAV. It has either been assumed that the reader knew this (and could therefore decode the writing) or that the author had read the figures somewhere and not questioned that a rigid body could act like a fluid.
I think that fixit_f's point was that their IT dept places more trust in a basic firewall from Cisco than an open source version on another OS. Would you really trust an IT dept that couldn't be bothered to do even a little research about common security tools?
My experience with Cisco VPN is that the same VPN functionality is provided by all the clients that Cisco provide for various OS - with regard to providing an IPSec based, secure channel between client and LAN. If the machine is question is allowed on the LAN when in the office and has a proven firewall in place then I can not see an issue with trust when it comes to setting up a VPN connection. Also, I would be interested to know if the VPN client check ensures that the Cisco firewall is active as a user can disable the functionality.
Now if the issue is about controlling which OS that can access the LAN then that is a different issue entirely.
I was about to make the exact same point.
I don't see how you can be forced to keep logs that you have explicitly stated you would not keep though. Not without the express permission of every data protection force (sorry, service) on the planet. Those damned interwebs get everywhere you know?
@Martin Saunders
"How fast used to heavily dictate the price, but now BT have changed their wholesale pricing model where the provider pays the same amount whatever the line speed, what is now more important is how much."
So shouldn't the ISPs respond by changing their pricing structure (and ads) so that it properly presents the product that they are selling?
Whatever, this does not adequately address the issue of false advertising. A term often trotted out is the "reasonable expectation" of the consumer. It would appear that the unqualified use of terms such as "up to" and "unlimited" produces a "reasonable expectation" beyond that which the service provider is capable. This also applies to the infamous asterisk, which essentially indicates that the previous statement is "a lie".
Please can you stop trotting out this anti-hype rubbish.
Certain analysts are the only ones disappointed by the level of sales. Most analysts predicted around the number sold and Apple didn't make any promises with regards to the number sold in the first 30 hours.
Some people would say that 150k units sold in 30 hours is very good you know?
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