"There may well be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but somebody, somewhere had to be first"
-- Carl Sagan
Posts by SpeakerToAliens
59 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Feb 2008
SETI's mega alien hunt shovels more data onto IBM's cloud
Sinclair fans rejoice: ZX Spectrum Vega+ to launch October 20
Elite: Dangerous 'billionaire' gamers are being 'antisocial', moan players
Wednesday 7th January 2015 13:46 GMT
Re: Tickets
> When Frontier actually gets around to sending the game to the 25,000 Kickstarter
> backers, things are going to get really tough.
They have, I was a Kickstarter backer. I'm also unable to play the game I've downloaded (v1.03). Once I get out of the menus all I get is blank screen.
I raised a ticket (numbered in the eleven thousands) more than 2 weeks ago. I wasn't expecting an instant reply, or even one within 2 days - it being Christmas and so on - but waiting 2 weeks and hearing nothing makes me wonder how far along the now 20,000+ tickets they've gone.
They could always give some statistics (# raised, # duplicate issues, # fixed in next release, # fixed by changing Users PC config), but I suspect that would just be giving us a stick to beat them with.
Coughing for 4G, getting 2G... Networks' penny-pinching SECRETS REVEALED
Wednesday 15th October 2014 12:39 GMT 
Why wouldn't the phone companies use it if your phone supported it?
It lets them provide twice as many simultaneous calls per cell tower at an acceptable audio quality, so why not?
In crowded locations/during emergencies that would be a real boon. Also, doesn't it increase the phone's battery life as the phone would only have to transmit/receive in a half-size time-slot instead of a full size one?
Doctor Who becomes an illogical, unscientific, silly soap opera in Kill The Moon
Sunday 5th October 2014 07:55 GMT
Re: There's something wrong with the gravity
The moon *had* to be magically heavier because simulating 1/6th gravity while everyone is walking around (and The Doctor was playing with his yo-yo) would be far too costly for a BBC budget.
In order to give the moon the same surface gravity as the Earth you'd have to add 6 times the Moon's mass without making it any larger. That would also give the Moon a density similar to uranium, so what on Earth (sorry) was the creature made of?
X-Men boffins demo nanomagnets to replace transistors
Thursday 2nd October 2014 05:53 GMT
Re: Core memory
One reason they were nervous was because core stores have power-off retention and RAM (back there and back then) did not. If there's been a power outage - not unknown in military applications - when the power comes back on a core store based computer can continue running its program where it left off with no lost or corrupted data.
LOHAN seeks stirring motto for spaceplane mission patch
Physicist proposes 1,000-foot state-sized walls to stop tornadoes
Friday 27th June 2014 07:04 GMT 
Where to get the material to build it?
Where to get the material to build it? Dig a trench in front of it! The trench doesn't have to be the same dimensions as the wall. It could be wide and shallow. Fill the trench with water (that'll probably happen anyway) and move in some wildlife, ducks, fish, etc. for the huntin', shootin' and fishin' crowd and sell licences. Build docks for speed boats and sail boats and jet skis (more licences). And yes, put windmills on top; and grass and trees and and maybe a path suitable for runners in a mega-marathon.
Tech that we want (but they never seem to give us)
ENTIRE UNIVERSE created in supercomputer. Not THIS universe (probably)
Think drone delivery is hot air? A BREWERY just proved you wrong
Tuesday 18th March 2014 07:10 GMT 
Nice advert. However, ...
... that box is definitely empty. Why? 1) Watch when it first takes off and moves forward. The box has very low inertia. 2) Look how far the thing tilts when going at speed. If the box wasn't empty there's no way air resistance at that speed would tilt it that far.
Of course, it could be a very "light" beer they're shipping...
Watch the MIT MER-BOT – half droid, half soft 'fish' – swim by itself
Saturday 15th March 2014 08:13 GMT
Firefox: "Error #2035"
Firefox (v27.0.1) - I get "Error #2035" instead of the video. I have Adobe flash player v12.0.0.55. This error seems to be "URL not found", though the video does play if I use MSIE.
Anyone else suffering this with Firefox?
Anyone know a solution (that doesn't involve using a different browser)?
Is Google building SKYNET? Ad kingpin buys AI firm DeepMind
NASA pic: DOOMED ice Comet ISON literally had snowball's chance in hell
Coroner suggests cars should block mobile phones
Mars defends: HUMANS to SEND UFO to Red Planet by 2016
Dawn of the X-Men? MUTANTS swarm AMONG US, say geneticists
Thursday 29th November 2012 17:17 GMT
Re: Moties!
In America "The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye" was published as "Gripping Hand". It included maps of various star systems and their Crazy Eddie Points.
I knew I had to read it when I saw a short extract published online - very short in fact - it was just a few lines from a message Bury was writing. He signed off with "Horace Hussein Bury, aboard the starship Sinbad, somewhere in the Mote system. "
Intergalactic speed demon stars bid Milky Way farewell
Death Star SUCKS PLASMA FROM SUN in NASA riddle vid
Flag-waving Lego Canuck soars to 80,000ft
Paul Allen latest plan: Space rockets on MEGA PLANE
Boffins one step closer to Terminator vision
Harry Potter director takes on Doctor Who movie
Duck and cover: ROSAT is the next re-entry
CPU cycles for stars: theSkyNet wants your sandbox
Sandi Toksvig puts the 'n' into cuts - on the Beeb
Hadron Collider 'could act as telephone for talking to the past'
Wednesday 16th March 2011 19:31 GMT 
Time Travel is impossible because...
...because seen from outside the universe has a single fixed amount of Mass/Energy that can never change. If even a single particle were to travel backwards in time from time T2 to time T1 then the amount of Mass/Energy in the universe would increase because there would be two copies of the Mass/Energy of that particle in existance between those 2 times.
To an outside observer the Mass/Energy in the universe would be seen to have increased during the interval T1-->T2 and then drop back to normal again. It would never be less than it had been so where did that extra Mass/Energy come from?
(I long ago read "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel" by Larry Niven)
Volvo demos automobile auto-pilot tech
Raygun 747 to fight 'one-off' tag with twin '09 missile fryings
DARPA at Phase 3 on solar powered surveillance strato-ship
Tuesday 28th April 2009 21:47 GMT
What would the US do if ...
...some other "World Power" built one of these and then flew it in range of their territory? Would their laser or railgun equipped warships be able to down the thing?
While reading that article something was tickling the back of my mind. Anyone read "Orion Shall Rise"? Remember the thing that hovered over Paris throughout most of the story?
Mine's the one made of radar absorbent material.
Mexico? US? Just don't go there, warns EU health chief
Stargazers peer into the 'Eye of God'
Crypto hash boffins trip on buffer overflow
Tuesday 24th February 2009 19:52 GMT
@Wolf
> How about using a language that does memory management, with an interpreter or compiler that knows how to optimize to the bare metal? It's a lot easier for a specialist to create a solution everyone can use, right? That's the whole *point* of code reuse..
We've been using the same home grown C utility libraries for more than 10 years. They are thoroughly debugged, run in every O/S and hardware combination we've tried them on (even Windows) with little on no modification and are very *very* fast. Certainly faster than those in the standard libraries. [At least with C (and C++) you can override the built-ins and use your own.]
That *is* the point of code reuse. If you aren't still using code you wrote 10 years ago then you need better code and better local procedures.
Happy Birthday, Turing's universal machine
Tuesday 18th November 2008 14:45 GMT
@@AC 00:30
> Windows IS the universal OS.
Windows isn't universal. You mentioned Linux but you forgot many others, the MAC OS for instance. Isn't that around 5% penetration? Plus, there are several versions of Windows. What's the %age penetration of Vista, Win98, NT, 2000, XP, 3.1, 3.0? Shall I power up my Atari ST or my TSR-80? How about my ZX81? None of those run Windows (Ok, the TRS-80 runs MS Basic, but its still *not* Windows).
> It's Darwinism at work - the best of breed succeeds.
So you're equating Windows to bacteria and viruses then. They've succeeded better than anything.
Mine's the one with the role of punched paper tape in the pocket.
Mankind to detect alien life 'by 2025'
E-voting fears run high as election day looms
Plasma rocket space drive in key test milestone
MoD's London brass resist job cuts
Monday 27th October 2008 13:03 GMT
Draft the civil servants into the Army
(yes, I did mean "Draft", as in, legally forced into the army, even if against their will).
They would have to come in as grunts of course, then they can be given 6 weeks basic training and shipped out to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Make sure the ex-civil servants get the soft skinned "snatch" land-rovers that they were so keen to tell us were up to the job and make sure they're at the back of the queue for body armour, so that the proper soldiers get the proper kit and the civil servant get the kit they were willing to pay for.
It will actually save money too, 'cos soldiers get paid a damn sight less than civil servants.
Mine's the one with the extra 7.62mm ammo in the pocket.
US judge rejects lawsuit against God
Peruvian football team has really bad day
Meat Loaf gets Q gong
Tuesday 30th September 2008 12:53 GMT
@Tony
> We need a flat cap icon for all the grumpy old men (like me) out there.
I've got one with a Bat symbol on the peak (a cap that is, not an icon). Got it when he did the Albert Hall a couple of years ago. Meat Loaf, with full orchestral backing. Magical.
Mine's the one with a Meat Loaf key fob in the pocket.
Orange sees broadband subscriber exodus
Thursday 7th August 2008 12:13 GMT 
Orange suck...
...in my experience.
Their 3G coverage sucks!
Their Broadband/ADSL service sucks! (It stopped working completely in the evenings.)
Their Customer Service sucks! - and when you can get through to complain all you get is apologies and broken promises.
I'm with Talktalk for home phone and broadband now. They're cheap and it works all the time. Not only does it work but they rang me up out of the blue last week to see how I was getting on with their service - Yes! THEY RANG ME!
I told them the phone was fine but the broadband was a little slow (650kb/s at 3 miles from the exchange) and they said they'd get an engineer to check. Ten minutes later they ring back and I've now got 1.3mb/s free, gratis and for nothing.
I'm with 3 for my mobile phone now - it works great - coverage everywhere I go, its cheaper than Orange and I could get 3mb/s data (capped at 3GB/month) if I wanted it, for just £5 extra per month.
Orange, as a company will be dead soon. Lets hope the other ISPs learn their lesson.
Hacker murders Facebook word game
Blighty's electro-supercar 2.0 uncloaked today
Telegraph falls to the Tw*t-O-Tron
Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue
iRobot Roomba 560 robot vacuum cleaner
Tuesday 10th June 2008 12:38 GMT 
We've had a Roomba for a couple of years...
It works fine, we just hit the "Clean" button on the way out the door in a morning and its done and back on its recharging station by the time we get home from work. We use the lighthouse things to keep it out of the kitchen (it got into the cats' food bowls and made a terrible mess the first/only time) but it does the rest of the ground floor (2 rooms plus hall) no problem.
We could use it upstairs (it will detect the edge of the stairs so it cleans up to the edge but doesn't fall down them) but the junk on the floors - especially in the kids' rooms - makes it more hassle than its worth. Bonus: That means the hoover lives upstairs now, so I don't have to lug the thing up and down stairs.
Ours came with a voltage converter (240v-110v). I'm surprised the one on review didn't But then again, we got ours from a UK importer (via ebay).
You must remember to empty the small dust container (and wipe/clean the filters!) every day. I also have to cut the long black hair from around the bristles every few weeks (my wife must be moulting). Our normal hoover has the power to cope with long black hair wrapped around the main drum, but the motor on the Roomba isn't powerful enough.
The Roomba goes under the furniture just fine. It scared the hell out of the cats though, they used to hide under the chairs!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
