Posts by Gareth Pye

'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm

Re: Voting Machines

The EC was for two reasons:

Dilute the power of big population centers.

Be a check against an unqualified president.

The former is of questionable value (the senate does that very well, and the reforms I'd propose for that would not eliminate that while making it much more representative: it should be multi seat electorates with a preference system of voting) and the later is apparent to not work.

Things that absolutely have to change for the US to be a democracy would be removing the many months of lame duck governments (there really is zero reason for these to exist, and the emergency things that do need immediate decisions can be done and require a vote once the new government sits) and centralization of election administration so there can be confidence in the election process.

Re: Glib rejoinder

And even with that distance we rely on having a free source of magnetic shielding from certain radiation and ozone sheilding from UV. There is a lot of things lined up for us to have it easy.

And it does raise serious questions about the realistic safety of fusion power when we figure it out, it still might be pretty dirty, most likely less than fission, but there does not appear to be any free lunches in physics.

More privacy for the Queen, less for everyone else

It's called a strike

When a logger is killed because the company is negligent the industry does stand up an say something. That's when they all go on strike.

Royal Wedding: Prince Charles is a ZX81, Wills is an iPad

and the rest

The list of countries that William will be King for was rather short I believe. If your going to go beyond England you might as well list them all.

UK polling stations turn away 'hundreds' of voters

Thursday V Saturday

Voting on the weekend makes it easier for most people to reach a polling venue during business hours, doing it on a week day makes it harder for many workers.

Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts

RE:Tom

Download package, double click it, click install, supply password = installed. Why do you need the console to do this?

Have you used a Linux system in the last few years?

Music downloads greener than buying CDs

3rd party numbers?

Why use a third parties estimate for CO2/mile, why not use the one uesd in the paper. Not having read it, your description makes it appear that they detail the assumptions used and CO2/mile had to be one of them.

Economists say P2P file-sharing fuels art

Smells like roses

Its not so bullshit, plenty of web comics operate by that model.

Worldwide GPS may die in 2010, say US gov

Silly Single Constellation Gear

That's what you get for cutting corners in your consumer gear and not using dual constellation receivers.

This type of news is helping us improve margins though, selling the slightly more expensive GPS + GLONASS receivers. The next time you buy something with GPS: ask why it doesn't support GLONASS as well.

Aussie has answer to save Earth from asteroid attack

Orbit?

How fast can something orbit an asteroid of that type of size? I would have thourght rather slowly.

But I guess this plan only works if the approach after 2011 isn't the fatal one, as we'll have to use that approach to launch the satellite to glad wrap it up to start slowly pushing it.

British pilot makes first supersonic stealth jumpjet flight

@ Adam Foxton

Yeah, thats what I want right next to where I land my plane, a constant stream of UAV's. I hope something a little bit more friendly to the planes would be a good idea.

Also how big would your tunnel be? I hear those seas can move a fair bit, you wouldn't want to have to turn your radar off when the seas get too big.

Another police website hacked

Isn't this good news?

"The website is hosted externally, away from all other police systems so no personal or confidential data could have been obtained."

That is the type of statement that gives me confidence, that is good sound administration.

El Reg lobs iPhone at Genius Bar

Monkey See Monkey Do

"After all, a quick web search of iPhone reviews turns up OVERWHELMINGLY positive ratings from just about every gadget / tech review site."

The quality of essentially all journalism these days is terrible, mainly because so much of it isn't by journalists. I'd much rather read negatively phrased articles, its much easier to get a balanced view out of it.

With devices like phones the annoying bits are much more obvious than the flashy bits, I recently upgraded phones because the volume switch on my phone was malfunctioning. Small part, huge impact on usage.

Dell cleans up crapware

still a long way from good

I assume they still require you to pay a Microsoft Tax though.

Users fawn over Ubuntu's feisty Linux release

Bit soon?

I love cutting edge news, pity that its just slightly ahead of the actual release of 7.04 :)

People might just have to wait a short while for 7.04 to be stamped as release not beta.