Posts by clv101

20 years of GSM digital mobile phones

Re: Re-writing History

Well said. Many of us were using smartphones, even 3G smartphones, for years before the 2G iPhone launched. Apple were late to the touch screen / smartphone market.

Re: 20 years?

Absolutely - this article is missing the Orange SPV (with its clip on camera!)

Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

This is serious

This is a serious problem. The quality of journalism has been declining for years, there's just no substitute to legwork and hours, both of which cost money. We need to find a way to fund journalism and on-line adverts aren't it!

I think a ~£24 a year 'tax' on broadband connections, to be distributed to UK based news organisations makes a lot of sense. At least as much sense as the Licence Fee. Just who is a bona fide news organisation is tricky though!

Move over Raspberry Pi, give kids a Radio Ham Pi - minister

They won't be transmitting (self build or not) on the amateur bands without the licence.

Medieval warming was global – new science contradicts IPCC

Response from the paper's author

Zunli Lu:

“It is unfortunate that my research, “An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula,” recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets.

Several of these media articles assert that our study claims the entire Earth heated up during medieval times without human CO2 emissions. We clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula. The results should not be extrapolated to make assumptions about climate conditions across the entire globe. Other statements, such as the study “throws doubt on orthodoxies around global warming,” completely misrepresent our conclusions. Our study does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend.

4G hobonet stunt was riddled with flaws, doomed to ridicule

This already works

The model works great in some of the poorest countries in the world - look up Village Phone. A single (expensive) phone and contract is administered by one person who then resells airtime and services to individuals who could hope to afford the phone/contract themselves but can afford a single call/email etc.

SUPERCOMPUTER vs your computer in bang-for-buck battle

We’re all using supercomputers.

State of the art computer performance from a little over a decade ago, is now available to everyone able to afford a modern PC. We’re all using supercomputers. Could we be doing more with our computers than playing games and Microsoft Office?

I blogged about this a while back: http://chrisvernon.co.uk/2010/08/supercomputers/

Qinetiq trumpets midsummer robo solar-plane 'record'

Poor show from The Register

...for being so critical of this achievement, of course it was done in favourable conditions! This is the cutting edge. The quip about the plane only working for a small part of the year is ridiculous.

This represents a threshold being broken, sustained solar powered flight. We can expect the efficiency of every aspect to be improved over time.

Would The Register’s coverage of the Wright Brother’s first 120 feet flight been similarly as critical and fail to see the significance of a new threshold being broken?

Academics kick off nuclear power war of words

405TWh UK consumption response

You are saying that if the UK can match a 2003 Germany we can generate 15%? Wow! That would be amazing. We have a far better wind resource so anything Germany can do the UK can beat significantly.

However your numbers are well off - the activity factor for wind is more like 25% and solar at this latitude more like 15% (3.5 peak sun hours per day).

New Nuclear Reactors For The UK: Is This Really A Good Idea?

The Oil Drum ran an article last week asking this question. The author concluded no but there followed a lengthy and detailed debate:

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3450