Posts by Pete Rowley 22 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2008
A PhD is completely different to a taught masters course. BAsically it means there are a number of cutting edge research projects to be undertaken - the PhD candidates will carry them out under the supervision of a principal investigator. This isn't about training a dozen highly specialised technicians - this is about carrying out fundamental info security research.
People who use 'numbers' (no idea why you felt the need to use inverted commas) also take care to apply them carefully and enusre there are no hidden assumptions.
I'm no lover of the Oatmeal, but I can tell you that it's not a daily comic, and a cursory check of the site shows there's a new one up perhaps once every couple of weeks.
Yellowstone is not 'due'. There's a reasonable chance there will be a large eruption in the next 300,000 years, but the errorbars on that are large (we only have 2 datapoints to try and infer any kind of pattern from - assuming there is a pattern. As a volcanologist I can tell you there isn't necessarily a pattern).
Seriously getting tediously sick to death of the crap climate reporting on El Reg. Even a cursory reading of the article in question points out that it is a single geographic area being looked at, and the authors themselves acknowledge that local ground-level temperatures have no direct relation to global climate. Grow up, or at least have the good grace to read the article and assess its actual implications. These blanket naysaying is pathetic, and frankly pushes the Reg into the same corner as flat-Earthers and young-Earth creationists who simply hang on to misinterpreted or fringe results which happen to agree with their own faith-based world view.
There's loads of known and exploitable REE deposits elsewhere. They were the main source prior to the 1980's/909's when China brought theirs onto the open market at a fraction of the market price. Everyone else put their mines on hold, and used the China supply instead. This China lockdown has been on the cards for a while, and as such companies have been spinning up their old mines in preparation. The Chinese deposits are certainly large and rich, but they are by no means the only ones.
Please don't promote this kind of shit press-release regurgitation nonsense. The guy has a track record of 'imaginitive' interpretations based on a complete lack of evidence, and this is no different. he has not a shred of evidence. As Sagan said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and this has none. I would go off on a rant, but it's already been done for me:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense/
er - what's the problem with carbon management?
As already pointed out - opinions with no evidence. This isn't science - it's politics.
There's no doubt that there is tendency for research bodies to assign funding to key areas such as global warming, and it's not ideal. Let's not blow this out of proportion quite as spectacularly as this article appears to be attmpting however.
Why on earth has this review focussed almost entirely on the video aspects of this camera? It comes across as if the reviewer has deliberately avoided mentioning it, despite the fact that for wildlife photographers this has amazing potential - crop sensor, properly weather sealed, numerous improvements over the 50D in terms of ISO, high speed shooting, and AF control... For any photographer not specifically intent on going full frame, this is a very serious contender to the 5DII
The video capability is really a sideshow. As already said, if you want to do video, spend 2k on a decent video camera, not on a 7D and the single lens you could afford for that cash.
It's a fair point but partially it's to do with chemistry - life is a series of chmical reactions and the physics required for biological reactions favours certain elements more than others. That's not to say other possibilities aren't out there though.
The big problem with the 'there's loads of stars so there must be loads of Earths' theory is taht it ignores several low-probability things that have effected how the Earth develop. Firstly, we were hit by a mars-sized object in our early history which ahs provided us with a truly massive moon for our size. Due to its size the moon has been able to stabilise a lot of the orbital eccentricities that effect other planets. These eccentricities would have lead to extreme climate variation which would in turn have made it very difficult for life to get a foothold.
We also exist in a fairly narrow band of space where water is neither frozen all year or boiled off into the atmosphere.
On top of that, we have a liquid iron outer core and solid inner core. The geomagnetism produced by this gives us a protective shield which reduces the ability of the solar wind to a) irradiate us all and b) strip away our atmosphere.
There's a whole host of other peculiarities. The other thing people forget is that there is an observer bias here. It may seem odd that there are no other planets like ours, but if very special conditions are required to get life then life can only evolve to observe those conditions. As a result you then take those conditions for granted and assume they must be common.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
