* Posts by Alan Esworthy

362 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007

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Australia backs down from Internet filter plan

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Down

toehold

Yes, the stated list includes only kiddie pr0n now, but the bureaucracy and technical structure will be in place, ready for quick additions to keep everyone safe from future bêtes noire du jour.

LOHAN's cold heart beats beneath silicon breast

Alan Esworthy
Mushroom

ORGASMIC

Online

Real-time

GPS-based

Altitude

Sensor

Module and

Ignition

Controller

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Souse versus scrapple

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Up

cultural preferences

I had a nice laugh over the posts from those who find these two foods nauseating. I suspect that a blindfold might make a lot of difference as both can be quite delicious. Non gustibus and all that, though.

I was very fortunate as a boy and young man to live on more than one continent and experience several cultures, especially their cuisines. It's not that I find all foods to my liking, but I'm never put off by the idea of any food. This makes it possible, among other things, to enjoy a delightful substitution for croutons. Earthworms or grubs seasoned with a bit of garlic fry up very nicely and are good and crunchy on my salad.

My father grew up near Philadelphia and we had Reading Terminal Market scrapple in the house as early as I can remember. I've always loved it. Souse just doesn't have a good texture for my tastes, though.

Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

Alan Esworthy
Paris Hilton

Less only in diameter

The Ft. Hood shooter used a center-fire cartridge with a lot more power than the much more common .22 rim-fire. Even so, the .22 LR has a muzzle energy of about 100 ft-lbs and the .25, even though a center-fire cartridge, has a muzzle energy of about 73 ft-lbs.

For comparison, the .44 Magnum has a muzzle energy over 1,000 ft-lbs.

And no, I'll not use joules. Do the conversion yourselves.

(Paris because of her muzzle energy.)

NYU boffins demo tiny tractor beam

Alan Esworthy
Paris Hilton

Video games developers are salivating

Just wait until this is incorporated into video display technology.

I can see it now..."Mortal Kombat LXXVII - It will SUCK YOU RIGHT INTO THE ACTION!"

...Paris because she would've been perfect for my first idea about a practical application of this new tech.

Pints all round as Register Special Projects hacks hack off feet

Alan Esworthy
Coat

There's an opportunity here

Don't want to convert pints to half-litres? Then convert to .6 litres.

We'd get a little more and we could call them "points" instead of "pints."

Alan Esworthy
Boffin

sliding how fast?

Aircraft altitudes, meanwhile, are commonly given in feet, as any pilot will tell you. Sure, there's a slow slide towards metres...

That slide is only half-slow (or half-fast if you will). My estimate is about two score furlongs per fortnight.

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

Alan Esworthy
Coat

Re: Inquiring minds...

"So that's premature hyper-sensitivity disorder?"

Yes, and there's also a related disorder known as electrile dysfunction.

Target Silicon Valley: Why A View to a Kill actually made sense

Alan Esworthy
Black Helicopters

Re: Todays target...

"Goldfinger's plan for Fort Knox should have worked. His plan was to irradiate America's gold and render it worthless."

What gold? The central banks and treasuries of the West, most especially including the U.S.A. may well not have any physical gold. Gold prices have indeed risen and production has increased but nowhere near as much as demand - and physical delivery - has increased over the past few years. Some Eastern central banks, most notably those of Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the Philippines, have been on a gold buying spree. The gold has to have come from somewhere, and in quantities few institutions could manage save governmental ones.

Adding to the mystery is that Western govt reporting of gold reserves is done with weasel phrasing. The UK refers to its gold allocation as, and this is verbatim, "Gold (including gold swapped or on loan)." The U.S. Treasury reports gold holdings as "Gold (including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold swapped)." The ECB reports their gold holdings as "Gold (including gold deposits and gold swapped)."

How much has been loaned or swapped? They're not saying. It would not be at all surprising to find, if we could open Western govt vaults and take a look, that they're empty save for piles of paper receipts.

Register SPB hacks mull chopping off feet

Alan Esworthy
Trollface

Meh

I grew up with English units and learned Metric as well at an early age. I work with both and can think in either. If I were uncharitable I'd say that caring deeply about this question is a symptom of mental deficiency. But I am charitable so I'll say that caring deeply about this question simply a likely error in prioritisation.

eBay frets as right to resell comes under scrutiny

Alan Esworthy
Trollface

I hope the decision's upheld, heh, heh, heh.

Govts all over the world, and the U.S. govt especially, are increasingly seen as organized crime writ large. If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with the 2nd Circuit and says Americans are not free to sell used copyrighted goods, this will simply increase the level of contempt (well deserved) in which that institution is held, and increase the flouting of the law. I'd welcome that.

LOHAN plugs into some hot LiPo treatment

Alan Esworthy
Mushroom

blast 'em

Use the thinnest suitable copper wire for the connection and route the wires across the rocket motor nozzle. Simple, effective, zero weight.

Oi, missile boffins! Stop ogling web filth at work - Pentagon

Alan Esworthy
Big Brother

Not sated?

I'm surprised these guys still have unsatisfied sexual appetites after the continuous and vigorous screwing they give us taxpayers year in and year out.

Forget 'climate convert' Muller: Here's the real warming blockbuster

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Down

money incentives

fero - Yes, Watts does get an occasional deal that pays but it doesn't pay much. Do your homework.

While you're at it, take a look at how much money flows into govt- and NGO-supported efforts involving climate change, and be aware of the perverse motivation involved. If you are a researcher, you get money to identify problems. You get money to study problems. You get money if you say more research is needed on problems. If you solve the problem the money stops. Get the picture? To criticize one side you need to criticize the other if you are to be honest about the way the money flows.

Alan Esworthy
Mushroom

Re: Great job! Soon the climate hoax will be exposed. =)

Climate change isn't a hoax, as climate is indeed changing and it seems always has and will.

Global warming isn't a hoax, as the world is indeed getting warmer and has been since the end of the last ice age.

But using "catastrophic anthropogenic climate change" as the basis for crippling the industrial economy of the developed world IS a hoax-based power and money grab that makes all previous such grabs seem puny in comparison.

Alan Esworthy

Reference

KS, I haven't had time to read the .pdf paper yet, but the press release does include this reference to Leroy's updated rating method:

Leroy, M., 2010: Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land, Climate, and Upper-air Observations JMA/WMO Workshop on Quality Management in Surface, Tokyo, Japan 27-30 July 2010 http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/qmws_2010/CountryReport/CS202_Leroy.pdf

LOHAN to brew thermite for hot ignition action

Alan Esworthy
Pint

Re: time

Perhaps it would be good enough if you draw your vacuum and just let the apparatus sit for while, turning the pump back on from time to time to make up for any leak losses. I think the time it takes to drink two or three pints or glasses of wine ought to do it.

Alan Esworthy
Go

time

I imagine that the vacuum pump achieves the target pressure much faster than the balloon ascent to launch altitude will take for the actual exercise. I mention this because if you use additional igniting material that contains volatile compounds, those compounds will have dissipated to a greater degree in a balloon launch than in your ground level testing. Perhaps you should take a roughly equivalent time to draw your vacuum so that conditions in the test chamber more closely match those in the forthcoming blessed event.

Web snooping bill an 'odious shopping list of new gov powers'

Alan Esworthy
Big Brother

time for one of my favorite quotations

"Government as our servant is just about tolerable. Government as our master...is our enemy." - Richard North

Computer error triggers mass rocket launch

Alan Esworthy
FAIL

"Glitch". Ugh.

"Although the company has yet to determine the exact nature of the glitch that caused..."

It's bad enough when non-techies use the term "glitch" but when a Reg writer use the term I cringe. A "glitch" has the same sense as "just one of those things" or "these things happen" implying that no one was responsible, if not outright inevitability.

This wasn't a "glitch". It was an "error". Somebody screwed up: designer, coder, packager, installer, tester, wire crew, user, SOMEbody.

LOHAN seeks failsafe for explosive climax

Alan Esworthy

modified variometer

So, your main release mechanism depends on absolute pressure. For the backup, use change in pressure; and variometers do this. In normal use these instruments measure rate of ascent/descent. You don't need that to be accurate, and it probably won't be at high altitude, you only need to measure rate of change. With proper filtering and smoothing to prevent premature release from turbulence, a change from ascent to descent should be straightforward to detect and used to trigger release.

Vulture 2 trigger triggers serious head-scratching

Alan Esworthy
Paris Hilton

image analysis

Assuming launch on a day with little cloud cover, could you not analyze the image of the ground as the balloon rises, watch known shapes determined by recognizable points, do a bit of spherical geometry and trigonometry, and calculate altitude? The kit would be quite light-weight, the mechanics fairly simple, but the programming would need to be somewhat sophisticated (but shouldn't be too hard for resources available to El Reg's boffinry).

(Paris because you don't have a Lindsay icon)

UK Border Agency servers go titsup, thousands grounded

Alan Esworthy
FAIL

Help!

"I'm from the govt and I'm here to help you. Bend over."

Regarding privatisation, The bureaucrat vs. contractor differentiation is to a large extent bogus in cases such as this. Yes, private contractors can be just as hideously incompetent as govt workers, but remember please that the govt workers write the specs, manage (hah!) the contract, evaluate results, and control the money. Even though this system is run by employees in the private sector I still blame the bureaucrats.

Yahoo! board! probes! CEO's! CompSci! CV! blunder!

Alan Esworthy
Meh

semi-meh

Lying's bad, mkay? But other than that, so what? A computer "science" degree is utterly irrelevant when it comes to running a company, even a high-tech company.

I agree that this is just a bogus excuse for Thompson bashing. He may or may not deserve bashing - I really don't care - but Third Point should properly focus on his performance as chief Yahoo! suit.

'Unibody' iPhone 5 said to debut in October

Alan Esworthy

queue

Any bets on when the first fanbois set up camp outside Apple stores waiting for the iPhone 5?

...or am I already too late?

Terrafugia flies first prototype: Flying cars 'within a year'

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Up

early adopters

No, I don't want one of these myself but that's not the point. This is an initial introduction of a new technology and only those with the money and inclination should acquire a Terrafugia. Perhaps these things will take off (sorry, couldn't resist), perhaps not, but this is the way new things enter the marketplace.

I'm glad flight testing of an early production model has begun (and eight minutes is not out of line for early flight test), and I wish the company and its clients and investors the best of luck.

Extreme weather blown away from unexpected direction

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Up

"Waaaaaah!" chorused the spokespeople for Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and WWF.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Alan Esworthy

Abysmal

"She Freak" from 1967. Burn every copy. Before viewing.

I'd like to think some of the cast/crew paid the producer to be omitted from the credits.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062259/

Eric Schmidt flicks INTERSTELLAR TOWEL at top tech fair

Alan Esworthy
FAIL

crisis management

"Governments will be able to spot the economic makings of a crisis before they happen..."

We've had the technology to do that for a very long time. It's called a "mirror."

All economic crises I can think of have been the unintended consequences of govt laws and regulations.

Future car tech

Alan Esworthy
Trollface

Re: SOS Button

Give her a couple of 2-foot strips of duct tape to play with.

Activist supplied illegally obtained docs to DeSmogBlog

Alan Esworthy
Facepalm

Re: Sir

In criminal matters, leniency, if any, should affect sentencing. Calling for leniency in charging, trying, and convicting is premature.

LOHAN's flying truss: One orb or two?

Alan Esworthy
Go

2-stage, sort of

Put wings/stabilizers on the truss and a small rocket motor on one end, turning it into a flying launch platform. Lohan launch would consist of first lighting the truss-mounted motor and cutting loose from the balloon tether, followed some seconds later by launch of Lohan itself from the truss platform/aircraft.

Scroogle unplugged for good this time

Alan Esworthy
Unhappy

Dang

Thanks, Mr. Brandt, for providing the Scroogle service. I was a long-term satisfied user and will greatly miss the search site.

Comments here regarding satisfactory alternatives (non-Bing, non-Google, please) would be welcome.

Zappos coughs to HUGE data breach

Alan Esworthy

not mutually exclusive

Best is of course both prevention AND mitigation.

Arctic freshening not due to ice melt after all, says NASA

Alan Esworthy
Boffin

Dear Mr. Page,

I request that you cease using derogatory terms such as "hippies" when referring to the CAGW crowd, but kindly please wait until the CAGW watermelons stop referring to legitimate scientific critics as "deniers" and "enemies of humanity" and as being "funded by Big Oil."

Thank you.

Gov unveils plans to make tax-funded research freely accessible

Alan Esworthy
Trollface

Raw data, too?

I do hope this includes all data back to the raw files used to create enhanced views such as aggregates and other statistical analyses. Furthermore I hope that whenever possible this new plan is applied retroactively to data used in research already published. Finally, code (or at least the formal algorithms) used to manipulate the data and produce the reported results is essential to give the full picture.

Suck on THAT, Phil Jones!

Manning's lawyer calls for pre-trial officer to quit case

Alan Esworthy

Security?

You've mistakenly posted this article in the Security section. It should be in Politics or Govt.

Durban failed: Relax, everyone

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Down

FAIL

With govts world-wide claiming and enforcing monopolies of money definition and creation (and using fiat currencies), the degree of indebtedness, led by those govt themselves, is the creation of the antithesis of a free market. Furthermore, the heavy-handed and expensive govt financial, environmental, labor, trade, etc., there is no such thing in the real world as a free market economic environment.

Blaming the economic crises (yes, plural) on the free market shows ignorance, ideological blindness, or stupidity (or some combination of those).

Senators: Globo-domains could mean consumer chaos

Alan Esworthy
Meh

Meh

Whether it's "caca" or "ca.ca" it's still crap.

Man fights felony hacking charge for accessing wife's email

Alan Esworthy
FAIL

what next, grocery lists?

From the article:

"Your client is being charged with security intellectual property – her email, accessing her intellectual property," judge Pat Donofrio said.

Judge Donofrio is confused, ignorant, stupid, or any combination of the three. "Intellectual property" legally refers to patents, trade secrets, trade marks, and copyrights. To include email is ludicrous.

Will I have to execute a non-disclosure agreement when my wife sends me out with a grocery list?

Google will ignore your Wi-Fi router ... if you rename it

Alan Esworthy
Boffin

how about...

...adding the suffix "_myob" instead?

Gallery mulls 'damage' after cleaner scrubs modern art

Alan Esworthy
Thumb Up

Yum!

"The substitution of an actual puddle of rainwater would, clearly, completely destroy the integrity of the work."

Delicious.

El Reg in email address blunder

Alan Esworthy
Megaphone

Eek

Eek

Disk drive crisis: Economists are terrible weathermen

Alan Esworthy
Big Brother

Govt intervention

Second what Philip Clarke said in post #1.

Tax and regulatory incentives from govt are an amplifying force in concentration. Such interventions are added incentive to locate in "friendly" regimes. Without such intervention, companies would still use the same economic and risk assessments to make their decisions but ceteris paribus they would be less likely to move to otherwise less profitable or riskier locations.

Anonymous shuts down hidden child abuse hub

Alan Esworthy
Big Brother

examine your assumptions

From the article:

"Their intentions may have been good, but take-downs of illegal websites and sharing networks should be done by the authorities, not internet vigilantes," writes Graham Cluley of Sophos.

"When 'amateurs' attack there is always the risk that they are compromising an existing investigation, preventing the police from gathering the necessary evidence they require for a successful prosecution, or making it difficult to argue that evidence has not been corrupted by hackers."

My comment:

Mr. Cluly (interesting name, that) makes a common mistake in assuming that "the authorities" are more honest and more competent than "internet vigilantes." The sad truth is that the authorities are not a different breed of humans; they have the same fortes and foibles as we mere mundanes do, but when they screw up they have the power of govt at their disposal and very limited liability for the damage they may do. We mundanes, on the other hand, have no such virtually unlimited power and are completely vulnerable for undeserved damage to others.

I'll take the vigilantes over the authorities whenever possible, thank you.

Euro fraud cops crush garlic tax evaders

Alan Esworthy
Alert

Yes, after a fashion

The import duties should be "harmonized" to zero. Why is there a duty on garlic, FFS?

To answer my own question, there's a duty on garlic because the local garlic farmers bought off their politicians so as to avoid having to compete and so make local consumers pay more for what should be cheaper.

MIT boffin: Salted disks hold SIX TIMES more data

Alan Esworthy

you got it

If you mean disk storage, doubling (or more) the linear density will double the transfer rate assuming the associated controllers and paths can handle it, and I think they can.

If you mean main memory storage, then see last week's article on memristor development with products coming in about a year.

Homeland Security bungles 'pre-crime' tech test docs

Alan Esworthy
Big Brother

Uh-oh

I find the prospect of being under constant govt surveillance highly stressful. And this tech essentially detects and measures stress, right?

I'm fucked.

Verity's secret shame revealed

Alan Esworthy

A phonetic alphabet is useful at times...

...such as when I found my surname spelled ESUUORTHY.

Alan Esworthy

OK, I'll trot out my foenetick alphabet

I put this together some years back and use it for amusement from time to time:

A as in Aeolian

B as in Bilirubin

C as in Cello

D as in Duh

E as in Eidetic

F as in Fungible

G as in Gila monster

H as in Herb

I as in Idiotic

J as in Junta

K as in Knit

L as in Llama

M as in Mneme

N as in Nit

O as in Oenophilia

P as in Pneumaturia

Q as in Quiche

R as in Ring

S as in Seamus

T as in Tsar

U as in Uilleann pipes

V as in Volkswagen

W as in Wring

X as in Xylophagous

Y as in Ypres

Z as in Zoon

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