(c) Harry Harrison 1965
"I always do what Teddy says..."
Prior art, I feel sure!
Posts by Neil Barnes
6265 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
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Creepy battery-operated teddy bear sex toy..,sadly, this is for real
What is it with cloud computing? Engage VM, disengage brain?
Apple wins patent to pump ads to your iDevice while you're watching TV
Google Nest slurps your life into the Matrix? The TRUTH
Tuesday 24th June 2014 14:06 GMT 
Why such complexity?
A camera that detects grey skies to decide to turn up the heating? A system that asks for local weather (from an earlier post)?
This is a classic case of creeping featurism. The technology is already extant: it's a thermostat. In a slightly more complex system, it's a split-zone system, with timers.
Do we really need, for the majority of people who work regular hours, more than this?
Longer flights burning more fuel can cut planes' climate impact
Titan sprouts 'Magic Island', say astroboffins
Monday 23rd June 2014 07:59 GMT 
The mere fact that the creature appeared...
Rumour has it that some of the creatures are so (ahem) titanic, that they are often mistaken for islands by visiting sailors and indeed scientific parties, who may land on them for research or indeed barbecues. Their mistake is oft-times fatal when the creature once again descends to the depths.
LOHAN in FIGHT to DEATH with brace of cantankerous canards
Microsoft to let customers know where Office 365 is going
Top 10 tech essentials for the festival season
Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?
Tuesday 17th June 2014 15:14 GMT 
The internet of fridges
What is actually 'required' - I use the term loosely, as in perhaps something that might be marginally useful - is a current picture of the inside of the fridge, so I can bloody well see what's in there (or not in there) when I get to the cheese counter.
Of course, there are still technical challenges to overcome - for example, if the door is shut, the little light is out, so the picture will be rather gloomy. Infrared isn't going to work too well, what with the cold in there... but I'm sure there's nothing insurmountable a couple of doctoral candidates couldn't sort out.
Space station 'nauts will use URINE-FUELLED ESPRESSO MACHINE
Toyota catches up to William Gibson with LED hood
Monday 16th June 2014 05:50 GMT
Re: A question and a comment.
In the UK, thou shalt not show blue lights at all unless thou art an emergency service vehicle, and thou shalt not show anything other than white or amber visible from the front (there may still be an exception for green lights for non-emergency doctors).
It's going to restrict the scope for images.
On the other hand, focussed bulk LEDs look an interesting technique for automating dipped lights; you could probably arrange things so you *can't* send light in the direction of oncoming lights. (Though if two similarly equipped cars approach, they may *both* make themselves invisible to each other... further thought required!)
Spaceplane design nipper Ariadne gets a promotion
Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled
Thursday 12th June 2014 08:48 GMT
And who will not be happy
until we're all living in caves, killing our own sausages.
I'd like to take each and every member of the 'environmentalist' lobby, strip them naked, and dump them in some nice hospitable location: a rain forest, a desert, the north Yorkshire moors or similar - and see how long it takes them to learn that:
a) man modifies his environment. It's what he's evolved to do, and
b) even environmentalists are amazingly dependent on modern technology and infrastructure.
Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK
So, what exactly defines a 'boffin'? Speak your brains...
Thursday 12th June 2014 08:31 GMT 
An abstraction of the surreal
An archetypical Boffin must surely be the chap[ess] who has the ability at a moment's notice completely to disassociate him[her]self from the real world and concentrate on the problem at hand. Ideally such contemplation will produce some tangible result, but it's not necessary.
It doesn't matter whether the real world is the pub, the stripshow (as above), the place of work, or indeed the top deck of the Clapham omnibus. Neither does it matter whether he's thinking about why his[her] pipe has gone out or left-right symmetry in some sub-atomic domain - it's not the problem itself, but the focus.
Example: you're looking at a butterfly and thinking 'pretty', or maybe 'I saw something once about chaos theory'. He[She] is working out how to attach the servos to the wings...
Wedding tackle started out as PROTO-SHARKS' LEGS, boffins say
SPIDER-TROOP, Spider-troop, does whatever a spider troop can
Wednesday 11th June 2014 19:03 GMT
Space sounds like an excellent location to use this[1]
Space is at least clean, at least most of the bits we've stuck up there are. I can't help feeling there's going to be a certain amount of dust and mud sticking to places you might want to climb while fighting.
[1] and in space, no-one can hear you scream if you fall off.
Glassholes beware: This guy's got your number
Tuesday 3rd June 2014 08:31 GMT
I have been suffering from a misapprehension
I had (after huge amounts (=none) of research) vaguely assumed that storage on the glassthing was local, and now I discover it must be connected to the borg?
This makes my antipathy to it even more, I think. Were I in such a position, yes, I think I'd block it.
Skype to become 'Star Trek' style real-time translator, says Redmond
Still using e-mail? Marketers say you're part of DARK SOCIAL
Klingon and Maori roar into 'mutt's nuts' dictionary
Google: The Internet of Things to become the Internet of ADVERTS ON YOUR THERMOSTAT
Thursday 22nd May 2014 07:59 GMT
Why is it
that every time I suggest ad-blockers are a *good* idea, I get shouted at? I seem to have dozens of people here who think the same...
Advertising is attempted rape of the mind; it's a waste of my precious time; and it doesn't bloody work.
When I want something, I'll look for it.
Now sod off, advertisers. Betcha can't get an advert onto my mechanical watch.
You know all those resources we're about to run out of? No, we aren't
Scoff ye not: Chap carves crunchy carrot-copter
Brits to vote: Which pressing scientific challenge should get £10m thrown at it?
Jupiter's Great Red Spot becoming mere pimple
Picture special: LOHAN makes fire in the sky at 15,000m
Monday 19th May 2014 10:00 GMT
Quote...
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
The interested reader is invited to consider the delta-v of those rocket motors, given their design thrust and their mass. I'm not surprised they went walk(fly)about. Another test might have had all three pointing at each other?
Cloud computing is FAIL and here’s why
Friday 16th May 2014 10:28 GMT
Could not agree more...
There is little reason for any software to require a permanent connection to an authentication server.
Rather, it should do the login, authenticate, and maintain that authority for a number of days - seven, fourteen, whatever. When it checks in tomorrow, that authority extends another day.
That way you always have a grace period in hand for when these little events happen...
Although I'm a complete cloudaphobe - I run nothing, either applications or data, which is not resident on my machine or on local network drive which I control. Luddite? Perhaps - but I've never been stopped by lack of network access.
Game of Thrones written on brutal medieval word processor and OS
Friday 16th May 2014 09:23 GMT
Re: I'm guessing his novels/scripts have never been hacked and leaked
@Dan1980 - I can't argue. For most of the day to day tasks where the format is not important, Word, in pretty much any of its versions, is fine. I'm ignoring the mess it makes of lists and bullets...
My argument is that a poor decision twenty or thirty years ago landed the world with a word processor that could do too much; the ability to change styles on the characters individually means that people use it like that, and the result is documents with a mish-mash of styles. We've also ended up with other editors that work the same way, because people are familiar with it... there's nothing I like more than spending a week with a thousand page document full of images and tables where every page has a dozen different styles, none in common with the pages preceding or following. For that it's the wrong tool, but people are resistant to using the right tool.
Had MS chosen instead to implement something along the lines of LyX, which *only* allows the style to be changed, but which with a well-written style doesn't need anything else, things might have been different. With Word, most people have not applied the concept of structure to the document; if it looks like a header, it'll do... that makes it tricky to change format, among other things - and there's a semantic difference between a header, and something that looks like a header.
Thursday 15th May 2014 08:06 GMT
Re: I'm guessing his novels/scripts have never been hacked and leaked
Got it in one.
And the major culprit? Let me think; a word processor that instead of enforcing a style and requiring that the style be edited to manage the look of a document, allows modification of text on a character by character basis, using invisible controls. I wonder where I can get one of those?
Truly it is said that a word processor does for words what a food processor does for food...
Smash 'n' grab: Fighting GODZILLA in your lounge? Read this first
Curiosity GOUGES AND SCORCHES Mars with drill and laser
How to catch a fraudster – using 'top cop' Benford and the power of maths
LG: Smartwatch? Pah! We'll measure your heart rate through your EARS
550 reasons to buy this book for your beloved: COCKROACHES of Oz
Boffinry breakthrough: First self-replicating life with 'alien' DNA
El Reg Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse back on the bacon
Thursday 8th May 2014 08:47 GMT
Re: Foraging allowed?
Because my intent was to do it the way 'the man on the Clapham omnibus' was likely to have to.
We *know* that you can buy a bag of rice and a bag of beans and a bone and live for a week; Lester showed that last year. We know you can buy big big bags of stuff at a rate a damn sight cheaper than the supermarket sells... but the man on the bus either doesn't have access to that or can't carry it home. It's simply irrelevant for most people (in the UK).
Again, there are few people in the UK - even the keenest gardeners - who can grow more than a fraction of what the need to eat. I manage usually not to buy apples between September and January; tomatoes and peppers from around July, and maybe a couple of buckets of spuds and a couple of kilos of beans. But I live in suburbia and my growing space is tiny. My parents have a couple of acres on Skye and produce about three quarters of their vegetables. Tastes better, sure - if it grows this year.
My intent was to show a palatable, reasonably healthy, and varied diet within the five pounds a person constraint using 'normal' shopping sources. I think I did that. Next year's will be better, and in particular will probably contain more fruit.
Wednesday 7th May 2014 08:33 GMT
Re: Foraging allowed?
A question of interpretation of the spirit of the thing, for me.
I constrained myself to use stuff that *anyone* could get who had access to a supermarket; no specialist stuff, no bulk discount in 50kg bags stuff, no end-of-day discounts. I did break that in a couple of cases: potatoes at £0.59 for 2.5kg which Anita discovered, and a jar of jam from fruit I gathered from the wild last autumn. There was also the rhubarb and some herbs from the garden.
If you're going to go the foraging and garden route, you'd have to start last year, but given sufficient growing space you could probably do the lot effectively for free. Hell, you could probably include chickens, or a piglet... but like it or not the UK is a small island and most of us don't have that much space - me included.
If it comes up again next year, I'll do it again, and seek even more variety based on what I learned this time around. What I won't eat, though, under *any* circumstance, is a London pigeon. Those buggers'll eat what makes a crow vomit...
Brit chap weaves silver bullet for wireless health scare bollocks
Spain clamps down on drones
Wednesday 7th May 2014 13:04 GMT
That's the point I made (and got thumped for) when the subject came up a month ago.
The ANO applies to everyone; there is no exception just because a drone is currently both cheap and fashionable... I'm still confused as to why people think there's a difference between a drone and any other radio-controlled model, and why the rules would be different.
Potato in SPAAAAACE: LOHAN chap cooks up stratospud with Heston Blumenthal
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
