Posts by Muscleguy

HP gets data centre fever in NZ

Low risk?

Don't make me laugh.

1. Auckland is still in an active volcanic zone, a new vent could open just about anywhere around Auckland just about any time. Ask NZ Civil Defence they have plans in place for various scenarios.

2. I hope it's tropical cyclone proof.

3. Auckland is just as much at risk of earthquakes as low risk places, like oh, Christchurch was believed to be until just recently.

Conclusion: the 'low risk of natural disasters' quote was written to keep their insurance quotes down. An offshore insurer one presumes. Also I wouldn't want their air conditioning bill in an Auckland summer.

Optus: Google, eBay just as dangerous as network monopolies

A look over the ditch

To New Zealand will show he is wrong. Ebay doesn't exist in NZ, a local startup called TradeMe does instead. I have no doubt that Ebay has the financial muscle to take them on, but they haven't. Why not? because they are not interested in any market they cannot dominate.

Besides which Amazon has stolen much of Ebay's thunder by operating an easy to use portal to sell pretty much anything second hand. I have a shop on there where I sell my wife's finished video games from various platforms. She uses the income to help fund the purchase of more. Sometimes I even make a profit on a game if it was bought used. It isn't an auction but that doesn't mean you can charge what you want either, get the price wrong and your item will just sit there unsold. It also has the advantage of the customer knowing they have bought the item there and then instead of having to bid and not being sure of getting it.

PARIS concocts commemorative cocktail

Sorry Douglas

The Pan Atmospheric Pancreas Blaster

Researcher warns of iPhone phishing peril

It's obvious really

I got a phone call yesterday purporting to be from my energy supplier, quite likely genuine but no way of telling. They wanted my gas and electricity meter readings over the phone. I told them no, I would do it through the website. It was also strange because they usually email me to ask for readings and are good at not putting links in their emails, they just tell you to go the website.

Considering the tactics of other suppliers who knock on my door it could well have been a sales call from another company.

Unarmed Royal Navy T45 destroyer breaks down mid-Atlantic

It's the Falklands Stupid

These are 'Air Defence' Frigates, the idea comes from the embarrassment of the carrier taskforce sent to the Falklands being pretty much useless as they had to sit so far SE of the islands so Argentine Migs couldn't reach them that their Harriers had only seconds over the Falklands so couldn't provide effective air cover. If that task force had been screened by, fully operational, T45's it could, theoretically have been parked between the islands and Argentina itself. Or that is the idea.

Of course we will soon not have any carriers to protect, but it's the thought that counts I understand.

How I used Space Shuttle tech to insulate the living room

Good Point

I once worked for builder in the holidays, he was building a neighbourhood swimming pool. To remove the risk of condensation forming on the inside walls (warm water, cold walls) they calculated that the dew point would fall Inside the wall. This was actually a good thing IFF you sealed the wall. I was largely employed in taping over the staples fixing plastic sheeting on the, wooden frame of the wall (over the insulation) to completely seal it (and help stop cold spots from the metal staples).

However trying that in a domestic situation is not really viable as people will want to pierce the plasterboard to hang stuff on the walls ruining the sealing.

Also the problem here in the UK is that not enough air flow is allowed in timber framed walls, that is the main reason you get rot from dewpoint damp. Houses in New Zealand (where this swimming pool was) have much higher air flow so the wall framing does not rot. Recent problems with rotting framing is due to inappropriate design and shoddy building resulting in ingress of rain water, not condensation.

How to make boots on Mars affordable - One way trips

One there already

Mars has a built in Space Elevator: Olympus Mons gets you most of the way there. I used to thing the mountain the palace in Lord Valentine's Castle was ridiculous, then I learnt about Olympus Mons. If nothing else it dramatically shortens the length of cable you need to use. As it's a volcano there should be some lava tubes nearby or on the slopes for at least a forward transport base.

As for the cost of resupply, the major effort in terms of fuel is getting off planet and so it wouldn't cost much more than Soyuz resupply flights to the ISS. Since you could stack them in advance you could even boost them up then use solar sails to get them to Mars, slowly.

Um sort of

I am a great fan of what the Polynesians achieved but these voyages were not entirely one way. In the first case canoes of young men would go off a venturing to find new land. Once done and the sailing instructions remembered and/or encoded in rope knots they would sail home and describe the living in glowing terms and thus gather volunteers and support for the building, equipping, outfitting and crewing a colonisation canoe or two (flat platform with a shelter on top supported on trimaran hulls). Having worked out how to get there and back and with the motive power free, there was nothing stopping them popping home to trade and find new brides. There is good archaeological evidence, in both places, that trade back home to the central pacific continued for a couple of hundred years after New Zealand (the biggest land mass colonised) was found and settled. A whole series of canoes went over some time period.

There is also the salutary lesson of Henderson and Pitcairn, which were colonised from Mangareva. Those colonies were interdependent, Henderson very much so as they had no trees suitable for making canoes or rocks for making tools. Pitcairn had rocks but no canoe trees (just scrub in essence). Mangareva declined because of overpopulation and suffered major deforestation (like Easter Island) and the supply/trade canoes stopped coming and the colonists on Pitcairn and Henderson were marooned. Jared Diamond tells the tale in Collapse. That there were no Polynesians there is why those islands have European names, nobody to ask 'what is this place called?'.

Fowler is a brand name

My copy is the second edition by the OUP, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers. I recommend people read the article on Split Infinitives, the dry humour is wonderful. In short: if it trips easily off the tongue it is proper English, if it sounds tortured then the effort to avoid a Snark has lead you into a heffalump trap and all may laugh at you.

Strange, blobaceous 'alien pod' lifeform found in Virginian lake

Live Long and Prosper

Or be wearing a red shirt and come from the Starship Enterprise.

Rocks, hard places and Congo minerals

Desperation, obviously is the answer

@Al 18

When you are desperate enough to work just for food, not money for clothes, or housing, just food (you live in a lean-to) then the mining or base extraction costs are minimal. Lots of displaced, desperate people in the area.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

Only in Blighty

Our youngest spawn is doing Compsci (and Genetics)* at a uni in Southern New Zealand. They make them all do a paper in written expressive English (which has done wonders for the spawn who is enjoying the effects) and they don't get a choice in terms of whether or not to learn C++ they have to (spawn loves it to bits). Back home people who don't learn how to program are not CompSci grads they are doing IT, and Information Technology is for Java 'programmers'.

So, time to differentiate the real programmers from the rest, stop calling both by the same name. And teach them how to write and that spelling is important, it isn't hard and the English Dept will thank you for the work, most especially now the govt don't fund them any more.

*Bioinformatics IOW, LOTS of demand for proper bioinfo people, nice salaries too. It's hard work doing a double major mind. So not for the faint hearted. Mrs Muscleguy (Maths and Compsci) and I (Biology BSc and PhD) are proud of our mutant hybrid spawn.

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

Tidally powered

The big temperature differences will, even in a non rotating world, result in huge atmospheric storms and if it has surface water currents as well. I certainly wouldn't see the place as a long term colony prospect. You would likely only be able to inhabit tiny portions of it and be constantly subject to the storms.

Podgy Googlers get shrunken plates

Faddism is endemic

in athletics, just as in the rest of life. Take those silly nose plasters for eg when we know that lung capacity is not limiting for exercise unless you have emphesema (it's cardiac output that is limiting). Until recently mid run rehydration drinks were all sugar, partially inverted dextrose to be precise. I used them dilute since at full strength they were anything but refreshing. Then they got some more science and you got some replacement salts in your sugar solution. Now the thing is all salt drinks (they come in tablets that fizz and dissolve in water), they don't taste of salt (much) because there are no chloride ions (bicarbonate ions instead).

The problem is we have know for several decades now (it won a Nobel prize) that you need some glucose in oral rehydration solutions for optimum and speedy uptake in the gut. But never mind I just add some sugary salt drink powder to the salt only stuff. Good job I have PhD in Physiology to be able to handle this stuff.

As for drinking diet drinks mid race, well it's got water in it and will be mildly acidic (aids absorption) but other than that no benefit. Mind you there is a LOT of sugar in full strength soft drinks, one small can of Coke has around 6 teaspoons of sugar in it.

Back when marathon running got going with the resurrection of the Olympics they swore by alcohol during a long run so I am just waiting for that one. Mind you a while ago I did go for a run a scant couple of hours after having a pint and had a blinder. Excuse me, I have a business proposal to write, in athletics there truly is one born every minute.

Portion Size is All

You may remember a study from a while ago into why the French are not as lard arsed as the Yanks despite their food dripping with butter, cream and stuff. The answer it turned out is portion sizes. The French simply eat less, the actual difference was only around 10% but for every meal, all through life. That is a big difference over time.

Mind you it is also possible to cycle and walk in French towns and cities so the French probably get more exercise too.

England versus Germany: Quaff real ale

This one

300K

It's traditional

to help you get to sleep by using a hop pillow, but in our new age pill preparation world this idea has not been kept up. BTW lettuce has soporiphic qualities as well, so include a nice healthy green salad with your pint.

I will also agree with Sebastian Brosig, Pilsner (the genuine article anyway) is nicely hopped. Did a tour of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in, wait for it: Plzen in the Czech Republic (they invented the stuff after all). If you do a tour they take you down into the chalk tunnels where they used to laager the beer at a constant 7C and there is a Large barrel on its side with a wooden tap in it brewed the old fashioned way and frothy from the yeast. You are encouraged to partake as much as you wish (I was driving dammit). It is the very nectar.

Snails on crystal meth: The facts

Oh, I forgot about those . . .

There are a number of people residing at her majesty's pleasure or on the sex offender's register who would love it if their hardware worked a bit more like pesky molluscan wetware and forgot about those embarrassing files.

The way back machine is not always a good idea.

If you remember the initial work on memory in simple beasties was done on planaria, which are flatworms. We learned that memory is chemical by grinding up learned worms and feeding them to other worms who got them some of that learnin'. Snails are a cut above flatworms in the neural dept (kin to those brainy cephalopods after all) so you can do more sophisticated experiments with them.

Besides they are better behaved than junkies on crystal meth.

Santa Fe man demands half a mill for being near iPhone

Conspiracy not needed

"Any proof that this stuff is actually bad, cancer producing etc would destroy modern civilisation."

Which is why science has been busily beavering away investigating just exactly these questions then? Mrs Muscleguy used to run admin for cancer epidemiology studies. One of them was measuring the EMF's in the houses, rooms, around the beds of those with a variety of cancers, especially brain cancers. No link between strength of EMF's and the cancers was found, not even for those who slept with their heads just the other side of the wall from the consumer unit.

Even Dennis Henshaw who has risked the derision of his scientific peers for decades has given up on EMF's being directly dangerous. The last talk of his I went to his hypothesis was that high voltage power lines were bad when were in areas of high pollution, such as car exhausts if beside a busy road AND you live downwind of them. The idea being that they ionise the particles making them even more dangerous when inhaled, a biologically plausible scenario. His data were not convincing however since finding sites with sufficiently prevailing winds upwind of major populations has proven difficult.

But the point is, science is asking these questions and they are not being stopped by the power industry. Not in this country anyway.

Mind you I still wouldn't recommend a pregnant woman took a tour of an aluminium smelter. We don't have that dose response curve for embryos worked out yet and we know they are sensitive. But that does not apply to the sorts of EMF's you find in a home, not within several orders of magnitude strong enough.

Absolutely Right

None of the properly set up experiments (they began to use the techniques the parapsychology people use) have been able to find anyone who can demonstrate electrosensitivity. Apparently they are not necessarily ruling out that there are some truly sensitive souls out there, only that they have never found one. These people are either in need of psychiatric help or just out to seek to blame anyone but themselves for problems in their lives (most likely). It's a goldmine for hypochondriacs, being 'electrosensitive').

Since we have now had in much of Europe cellphone coverage for 30 years now, the epidemiologists have been mighty quiet about the huge extra load on health services that must have resulted if these people are right. Which is a good thing to ask yourself when the doom mongers tell you civilisation will end if you continue to eat/drink/wear/breathe/be exposed to X. Where are all the bodies?

It's official: Blogging is a dangerous business

Addendum

Think yourself into the plod policing the accident. There's a group of people, one of them is shooting photos like there is no tomorrow. If he is allowed to continue the rest of them might get the idea that it is ok to take photos in this country, then it's camera phones galore. We can't have that, what about terrorism? So the guy gets approached and told to can it, but he is a journo. Plod is on a no win situation here, if he backs down, and a sergeant to boot, then the hoi polloi are really going to go nuts with those camera phones. They might even snap him! So it then becomes beholden on Plod to arrest the guy.

Can't have the public thinking they can do what they want, can we?

/channelling plod

Plod don't think

that way. The linked article did not say what the journo was actually charged with. It wouldn't have been 'taking photos' it would have been something like 'causing a disturbance', 'resisting arrest' or some such. The legal argument then is over whether the events leading up to the charge were sufficient. The police see things like that as getting off on a legal technicality, so there would be no reason to discipline the officer in question. As far as plod is concerned the journo should have complied with the request then pursued the matter quietly. He brought it on himself for being bolshy iow.

Butterflies In Spaaaace!

Crystal ball gazing

@ElReg!comments!Pierre

That all depends on what happens, surely? Are you aware for eg of what butterflies eat? nectar. Which is largely glucose/sucrose. Hmmm what commonly available liquid glucose/sucrose source is there? right, sports drinks. Food safety regs mean the gatorade is essentially sterile too. Therefore it is an ideal food for captured lepidoptera.

If they also have pupae then they will develop normally kept like that so they will indeed be perfectly adequate controls. I suggest to you that you are focussing on differences in the setups that are not important to the experimental design and are not as different or as significant as you think, especially since you don't know that they space butterflies will be fed anything other than gatorade. You simply assume otherwise.

I'll say it again, butterflies eat, glucose/sucrose solution.

Wrong name

Sure they are not butterflynauts since we are not humanauts or peoplenauts. Speaking purely from a scientific p.o.v. its the developing pupae that will be the most interesting part of the experiment. It's still an open question as to how much zero g or microgravity will affect development. We need to know if we are ever to have permanent colonies in space.

Loud sex a human right, says loud sex woman

Type of noise matters

We are attuned to pay attention to voices, so a voice is more disturbing to sleep than say an equally loud fridge motor, its how our brains work. Coincidentally last night I awoke in the small hours and became aware of voices. They were beyond the range of being able to hear words, I was just aware that somewhere, probably the neighbours 30m away, someone was having an unquiet conversation, not even shouting (I was too drowsy to be bothered to look out the window for whose light was on).

This conversation I could only barely hear was enough to wake me from a deep sleep. Yet I bet noises equally loud if not louder (cars for eg) had intruded into my bedroom and left me blissfully unaware.

I agree that 49dB is not loud, unless you take into account it was in someone else's bedroom AND was a vocalisation. It must have been much louder at source. Her partner will be deaf soon.

Chronically ill people 'happier if they abandon hope', say docs

Works on on things too

As a middle aged man who runs I could spend my time bemoaning how I can't run as fast as I could when I was 18 and I get all these new niggles (I have pulled muscles most of you haven't heard of) and they take longer to heal and some of them don't fully. OR I could realise that there are still challenges in denying the ageing process as long as I can and seeing how fast I can still run along with being happy that my groin is only stiff now and it's generally gone by the time I'm at the end of the road.

The main thing is I can still run. The training still works, it just takes longer because I can't handle the workload like I used to. See you all on the road.

Scientists flee Home Office after adviser sacking

@Werner McGoole

Well I'm a scientist too and I disagree with Alan Johnson and have emailed and told him so and why. The Misuse of Drugs Act mandates the advisory committee's existence. It has to be there and it has to be independent. There is some question as to the status of the act if the committee were to disband. The question is whether the committee is independent or not. Nutt should be free to tell us about the evidence, otherwise how pray tell are we the non experts to form an informed view?

Under your little schema everyone remains ignorant and all decisions get made on the basis of ignorance and prejudice. I doubt that you think this would be a good thing. Have a think about it.

UK gets final warning over Phorm trials

I do wonder

Why the govt is being so recalcitrant and dilatory over this. The delays are becoming beyond mere incompetence. It is becoming so that it is easier to suspect that the govt want phorm's techniques to be used because they hope to piggy back their own surveillance on it.

Only both prompt introduction of the required changes into parliament and proper prosecution of BT, Phorm and the individuals responsible will take this suspicion away. With Mandy involved it looks even more suspicious. If I shook hands with that man I would count my fingernails afterwards.

Apple Magic Mouse

Wrist vs forearm

It's not either/or. For large movements you take the heel of the hand off the table and move the whole arm, for small and delicate movements you use the wrist. Oh and the Mighty Mouse is a 5 button mouse. On mine pressing the (working) trackball calls up the appswitcher.

As for why a trackball and not a scroll wheel, well Duh! 'cause I can scroll sideways as well as diagonal with some apps. Why is that so hard to understand?

Finally I have an RSI type problem (not carpal tunnel) and the hockey puck was just fine for me wrist wise. I too flicked it about with my fingers. It is not only possible, it is downright sensible. As for mice that 'fit your hand' it might fit your hand but mine are different to yours. Also if you use your fingers rather than your whole arm all the time you don't want a mouse to fit your hand.

It seems that Apple understand that mouse use is a dynamic process and straitjacketing users into one mode over all others is bound to fail.

Magpies hold funerals for fallen feathered friends

@RichardIV

What makes you think our emotions are in a different class from those birds, or any other animals have? If you cut them do they not bleed? I smell some unwarranted species level special pleading. We are animals too you know.

BTW when you observe the same events it is parsimonious in the absence of evidence to the contrary to treat them as having the same source. Thus if elephants look very much like they are grieving (and remember an elephant has passed the mirror test of self awareness) then they are grieving unless and until we have evidence that they are doing something else.

It is no accident that all the species shown so far to pass the mirror test or variants are social animals, including us. BTW last night's Horizon reminded that our infants only pass it sometime between 18 and 22 months of age.

Republican men hormonally emasculated by US election

@AC 14:44 GMT

Nah, they were just in denial. The fact that the median level drops over time simply means a good chunk of them came out of that when presented with the facts. Something that perhaps should be a small cause for hope?

Interesting

The error bars (those fuzzy bits) are much bigger for the right wing losers than the democrats. So not only does losing drop your testosterone but it sends it on a roller coaster ride if you could follow any individual on a realtime basis. Either that or a load of them were in deep, deep denial or getting pumped imagining how they were going to blow Obama away (we know lots of them engaged in those two activities).

Barnes & Noble's ebook reader takes its bow

Some sense at last

Finally someone has realised that one downside of how ebooks work is you cannot lend them. So good for B&N realising that needed changing. Now if they can only build a second hand ebook store and actually price them according to the savings they make from not having to print, store, transport etc the paper book then it will all be good.

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

It's the RAIN stupid

The point about preserving the Amazon from global warming, is that what is expected to change is the rainfall as the climate warms, meaning it will likely burn at some point, if there is any left. The Congo rainforests will not all suffer the same fate since rising temperatures look set to maintain or even increase their precipitation, again assuming there is any left unlogged.

So global warming will destroy all that biodiversity that we now, just about, still have. So sure we will still have rainforests (there are lots more around the planet, just not as big or diverse). We won't have all that diversity and it will take literally millions of years for any de novo or beneficiary rainforest to generate the sort of diversity the Amazon has, assuming us humans allow any of them to be big enough. Besides a lot of the variety is thought to have been generated as the forest got fragmented during climate interregnums of various sorts, the beasties and plants then diverged in the isolated pockets and spread out again when the good times came again.

Boffins demo 'through-walls' people tracker

Need more

Accuracy. +/- 3 feet might be enough in large floor plan American homes but no good elsewhere in the world. I too would want to see it peer through double brick or concrete block walls with even that accuracy.

Besides if you know you are being monitored you can just make one of the hostages move about like a hostage taker would to confuse the cops. No need for jamming tech if they can't tell who is who.

Coin-sized nuclear isotope battery minted

Umm, Steve? 2

Mate, as I stated I have worked with 35S, and 32 and 33P, and 125I and been around tritiated samples. Did you read the actual half life of 35S? When a pot of labelled nucleotides or amino acids gets more than 2months old it gets binned in the radioactive waste stream. Then it gets stored as I said for about a year until it is no longer a danger.

Are you aware that there will be radioactive carbon in your body from natural isotopes emitting radiation possibly right now? You know what happens the vast majority of the time an alpha or a beta particle hits something in a cell? nothing. If it does damage either the damage is repaired or the cell is kicked into cell death. You need a crippled p53 gene for that to go wrong. Cancer needs at least, at least 2 separate hits to get going.

Now can you stop scaremongering and treating all radioactive sources as dangerous please?

Radiation ≠ Bomb

I agree with Chris 155. Biology uses 35S routinely to label proteins, its good that it has a short half life, it makes it 'hotter' in the short term if you get it 'fresh'. Isotopes that take centuries to decay are no use because you have then wait decades for your detection system to get a signal. It's things like uranium, plutonium, caesium and such you need to be wary of in terms of long term danger.

My understanding that the 'fresh' isotopes come from nuclear reactors and syncroton sources meaning they are truly fresh only recently having been made radioactive.

There are defined waste streams for such material, generally 35S contaminated materials will get stuck behind the squash courts (thick concrete walls) until it has cooled down then put in the general landfill/incinerator waste streams. That way it avoids the costs of paying for disposal of actively hot waste.

Giant megaships to suck 'stranded' Aussie gas fields

We already have them

There are two mobile platforms tied up being mothballed/refitted here in Dundee. They have been here for months and are not the first. They are triangular vessels, flat bottomed with long framework legs, one at each corner. In port these stick up a couple of hundred feet into the air such that they have aircraft warning lights on top and you can see them peeking over the hills around about. Out in the North Sea those legs are lowered to the bottom and the platform sits above the waves on them. They are primarily exploration vessels but could just as easily be temporary production platforms.

You don't have to go all the way to Somalia for a pirate threat. Once you are NW off the coast of Australia you are close to Java and Sumatra. Since Indonesia and Singapore settled their differences and started joint patrols in the Molucca Straits the pirates have been at a bit of a loose end . . .

Amazon tosses gelded Kindle at UK readers

There is a market

The obvious market is academia. E book readers are a godsend since journals went online with downloadable .pdf files at the end of the last decade. I have CDRs galore stuffed with pdf's. Only being a biologist I will wait for the colour versions as having a monochrome one will be like going back to the days of photocopying journal articles from the hardcopy in the library losing much information in the figures in the process. E book readers promise to dramatically reduce the amount of paper used in academia as pdf articles are hard to read online so they get printed out. The prospect of gaining space under and beside desks by kicking out filing cabinets filled with hard copy papers is also attractive.

Books? at no reduction in price? please. The future is academic. So they are geek devices, just a different sort of geek.

Beeb unveils new Doctor Who logo

I agree

That the Russ Davies stuff was generally poor. Too much magic tech waving to paper over gaping plot holes and far, far too much supernatural stuff like the Devil living in an asteroid, ghosts etc. Someone should have taken him out the back of the studios in Cardiff and told him It Is a Sci Fi show with emphasis on the Sci. Punctuating each syllable with a kick to his balls. Even then it might not have done any good.

Bring back Christopher Ecclestone too.

US Navy boffins put an end to drought

How?

For a tech site the lack of detail on the mechanism(s) of the new unit are rather disappointing. Go on, tell us how it works? While you are at it a solution for the tiny problem of disposing of the concentrated brine produced from both RO and distillation plants would be nice. You see pumping lots of it back into the sea is not good for the marine life and you have to do it a long way from the inlet pipe.

NO2ID beats off ad complaint

It's happened

Remember the protests by animal rights loonies over that guinea pig farm? They intimidated anyone visiting or doing business with it, how did they find out? They noted the license numbers of all vehicles visiting the farm then asked a DVLA worker they had suborned to look up their details from the license numbers. His trial and sentence was just a minor, but significant, bit of fallout from the clampdown that ensued.

After I left the National Institute for Medical Research in NW London a group of said loonies began to hang around outside and were seen noting vehicle numbers. We had already been warned before I left to check under our cars in the morning. Not pleasant people, and someone happily sold them the data.

Now some of you are telling me that the NO2ID poster is over the top? Access to the DB will be in hands of people, probably not paid all that much at that. Sale of material is not just likely it is inevitable.

NZ scientists identify giant, man-eating eagle

@AC 13:15 GMT

Haast's eagle died out before the last moa was eaten. There was then a gap of a couple of hundred years before sheep were introduced, too long to wait for a hungry eagle.

Don't let creotards

remove a perfectly good word from our vocabulary. Haast's eagle was designed, the point is that it was designed by Natural Selection. Darwin did not win the Argument from Design by denying that living things exhibited design, he did it by showing how you get design without a conscious designer.

Anyway if we were designed by a deity I want a word or two about my bloody knees, I want eyes like cephalopods and can he/she/it hurry up and make us humans fully bipedal please? (oh my back!) oh and the breast ligaments of females need beefing up.

BTW the headline and subheading on this article should be reported under the trade descriptions act. As your article admits we have known about Haast's eagle for a very long time. The research was taking part in the argument over whether it was an active, killing predator or an opportunist scavenger. Do try and read stuff before you write the headline.

Parallels woos Apple cult converts

Why the emotive tone?

Were the 'cult' and 'Jobsian' jibes actually necessary for getting the meat of this news across? no. So why include them and alienate a large segment of your audience? I shall conclude therefor that you are simply a shrill for the Gatesian Hegemony and ignore any and all articles from you in the future. Nice work that man.

Apple accused of lowering cone of silence over iPod flame out

Not one drop

But two, his daughter dropped in initially then on his own admission he 'hurled' it out the back door which constitutes the second abuse. Everyone is assuming that the first drop caused the 'explosion' which was subsequent to the 'hurl'. I think we need very much more info before rushing to judgement here.

Mines the one with the lethal bottle of coke and Mentos in it. In separate pockets, I'm no dolt.

802.11n Wi-Fi to be standardised... at last

Any chance

this will mean a wifi unit for an Xbox 360 might work with an Airport Extreme?

Sorry, mine's the one with the amazon seller ID in the pocket. We did get more for it than we paid at Game though not enough for the aggravation in trying to get it to work.

Ecopocalypse causes giant fish ears

Oh you youngsters!

Control group? why step this way youngster into the bowels of the Zoology Dept, in these here drawers are 70 years of sea bass otoliths and over here . . . Or you could simply look up the published data set online, I'm quite certain there will be one. Otoliths have been used for decades to tell how old fish are as they lay down new layers every year, like tree rings. So I expect the enlarged otoliths will have larger spaces between each ring boundary meaning that there will be more measurements than overall size. This is not the first time us boffins will have gathered data from otoliths, of bass or any other species of fish.

Maybe they are growing larger otoliths to change the range of frequencies they hear. I wonder what sound our nets make as they move through the water . . . Remember these are the ones that keep getting away.

Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

People don't get it.

The article is not trying to stop people selling copies of out of copyright works, it is against people who are doing that using the copyright on their editions to deny public access to other editions that are not copyrighted. To borrow a previous analogy, it is like a cinema you cannot get to preventing you from attending a cinema you can get to.

A better one: a specific recording of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan can be copyrighted. But you cannot use the existence of that copyright work to prevent your local secondary school orchestra from playing the Fifth at prizegiving. This is established in that area. So the article is right to object to it not being similar wrt written work. It is clearly a land grab and is equivalent to the enclosure of common land. It should be opposed.

Don't call me Ishmael

In Science

The possibilities are endless! we have already had Cambrian species but in a Zoology dept you could have species under study or over in the MolBio lab gene names can also be useful, a small cluster for example could named after the hedgehog family, sonic included. Though that would be problematic in those labs working on C. elegans worms as their powers that be have decreed the names should be alphanumeric according to a detailed scheme, spoilsports!

I do agree with the non Tolkein thing though that is so passé, my university had servers called 'Rivendell' and 'Gandalf' back in the '80s for goodness sake.

BTW all the streetnames around here are named after Lochs, we are in Fyne Rd which is off Torridon Rd. Not obvious to the geographically ignorant I grant but a good scheme for a town planner here in Scotland.