Posts by Martin Budden

Quantum computer one step closer after ‘true’ quantum calculation

Re: Reg: May I propose....

Certainly. As you were the first to raise the subject, your punishment should be the most severe ;-)

p.s. you have just lost The Game.

This 320-gigapixel snap of London is size of Buckingham Palace

Re: There's full frontal nudity ...

At this time of year on an overcast day? You just made that up, didn't you.

Bees use 'electrical sixth sense' to nail nectar-stuffed flowers

Dunno, the results were not entirely positive.

Open source app can detect text's authors

o rly?

Can it read txt?

Drone quadracopters throw and catch inverted pendulum

I like how the thrower does a somersault.

Boffins use DVD burner to scale graphene supercapacitors

I eagerly await independent verification!

If this breakthrough is all it claims to be it is wonderful indeed. I really hope it turns out to be true.

Ask Google this impossible question, get web filth as a reward

Re: Either that, or,

Is it something to do with searching for two girls but only one cup?

You lot never fail me!

Only El Reg commentards could hijack a perfectly good article about porn by turning it into a debate about parsing mathematical formulae!

Have a pint, and keep up the good work!

Spanish boffins increase GPS accuracy by 90%

Bring it on!

I can't wait for an autonomous car which can drive me home after I've had a few beers. We could also change from being a two-car family to being a one-car family: after the car takes me to work in the morning, it can drive itself back home then take the missus and spawn to their destination.

I'd always assumed that smartphones already did this, as they have the sensors.

Doped nanotubes boost lithium battery power three-fold

Bring it on!

Better battery technology is the key to making electric vehicles a viable reality.

(Before anyone starts saying "so what the elecricity still comes burning from coal anyway": it doesn't have to. The electricity I use at my house is small solar and big hydro, and there's always the clean nuclear option.)

Still-living, unincarcerated Ted Nugent invited to Barack Obama gig

OK, let them bear arms...

...as long as the arms they bear are only these.

Rogue Squadron: Unit of X-wings Kickstarts in response to Death Star

Re: Oops

No need for the Blockade Runner because the new Death Star plans are open source.

Re: Chicken wire over the exhaust port

The rebel's Proton Torpedo Mk II will have pliers mounted on the nose-cone.

Kiwi Coroner says Coca-Cola helped kill woman

Re: Then there is the local soda machine...

Yes, a lot of liquid! Explains why she died while sitting on the toilet.

Fail icon is for stupid dead woman, not for any commentard.

Why are the missing teeth missing from the article?

Her teeth had all dissolved away, and at least one of her children was born without enamel!

If she hadn't already bred she'd be up for a Darwin Award.

Soak up CO₂ with sponges, says CSIRO

Re: Oh goody

mutatedwombat, you forgot to use an icon: either Joke Alert or Troll, your choice.

Where are we going to store it?

It's all very well being able to capture it, move it somewhere else, and release it easily... but where are we going to store it in a way that it won't come back?

NASA melts mysterious 'metal Martian flower' myth

Re: It's obvious.

It would explain why there is no surface water: the tap is off and the plug has been pulled out. The rover has found the tap, now where is the plughole?

Pope resigns months after launching social networking effort

Re: It takes a great man...

Habet duos retorridam testiculos et male pendentes.

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

Re: 668

6.66 - Hear the song!

Public told to go to hell, name Pluto's two new moons

Re: Stick with the dog theme

Yes, if for no other reason than to educate the young masses where JKR stole Fluffy from.

Huge rock-hard marble erection shocks Japanese kiddies

Re: Copper???

Wood does retain heat, it just doesn't conduct very well.

Shatners talks space, acting with fellow Canuck on ISS

Re: Barenaked Ladies, not Bare[space]Naked Ladies.

During the upcoming performance are we allowed to call them Barenaked Space Ladies?

Re: iPads in space?

OK, here is a **serious** answer: after start-up it will display the default orientation, which is portrait. You can then switch to landscape by giving the iPad a sudden rotation (it might take a couple of tries to get the right amount of rotational acceleration to give the desired result). This also works at ground level with 1g: try it with the iPad lying flat on a table.

El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa

1. Warm the pot

2. Put one spoonful of tea in for each person plus one for the pot,

3. Throw away

4. Get some beer instead

Seriously, beer!

Earth-like planets abound in red dwarf systems

Re: If there is life out there, they're keeping quiet

We are the cast of their Big Brother telly show.

Kickstarter project says open source can blast Death Star costs

He'll be laughing if it gets funded.

All he has to to is draw a pair of parallel lines across the middle of the circle and buy about 20m² of chicken wire. Half an hour after getting the funding he'll have fulfilled his requirements and he'll be about £19999970 better off.

Wind now cheaper than coal in Oz: Bloomberg

As far as threats to life go in Australia, I would also rank wind power level with terrorism: extremely low risk.

NASA deep space probe sends back video of 'Comet of the Century'

It is not Comet Ison.

Comets are named after the astronomers who discovered them, so it should be called Comet Nevski-Novichonok. ISON is the name of the group of observatories which Nevski and Novichonok used to find the comet.

Euro boffins plan supercomputer to SIMULATE HUMAN BRAIN

They can use my computer if they like.

Serious question: could distributed computing (like SETI@home) work for this?

and sail the wide accountant sea!

Under cap-and-trade, flying is greener than taking the bus

Re: @Richard81 - Yeah right

"What is this "gap" you speak of?"

Watford Gap

Kirk to beam up chat with ISS astronaut on Thursday

Shatner is not a fictional astronaut.

"William Shatner, a lot of people's* favorite fictional astronaut"

No he isn't. He is not, never has been, and probably never will be an astronaut, fictional or otherwise. He is a real person, actor, musician.

One of the characters he played was (will be) a fictional astronaut, but that is not the same thing.

Schoolgirl's Hello Kitty catonaut soars to 93,000ft

beep beep beep beep beep

Was the audible beeping to aid location of the landed craft? If so, it's an excellent idea, one that LOHAN should steal use.

Re: Balloon burst

I for one immediately thought FSM!!!

Bring out your dead: Reg readers reveal filthy, filthy PCs...

Re: You're breathing this stuff!

I could be wrong, but as far as I remember I've never breathed in a mummified frog.

'Why can't we say we're happy to be RIMmed on a daily basis?'

Dangleberry, Tagnut, and Winnit. (Sounds like a firm of patent lawyers)

Blobs that swarm spark ‘it’s alive’ hypegasm

Didn't someone already study flocking with sheep?

The answer was that the sheep in the flock aren't moving together, they are each just trying to get as far away as possible from the outside edge of the flock and into the centre where there is less chance of being eaten by a predator. And yes I strongly suspect that a simple rule like that could be expressed mathematically.

Icon shows a deerstalker: deer herd too, presumably for the same reason.

Sea Launch comsat rocket goes titsup 40 seconds into launch

Re: Why not launch from altitude ?

There's only a sparse population east of Mt Kenya, and even fewer people east of nearby Mt Kilimanjaro.

First video inside thinking fish's brain captured by boffins

"we are led to believe that there is already some geezer(?) who looks in to out heads and knows what's going in there -- and it ain't Derren Brown, either."

Santa!

City heat leak can disrupt high-altitude winds

Re: Insulation will help.

"too absurd"

lol

Re: Insulation will help.

@ Callam McMillan

Very good point. So, how about pumping heat from offices/datacentres to houses? In Stockholm they have a system of pumping heat around the city in underground steam pipes, so it can work. The pipes are, wait for it, insulated ;-)

@NomNomNom

I'm fairly sure you don't actually believe a word of your own post and you are just trolling.

'Gaia' Lovelock: Wind turbines 'may become like Easter Island statues'

Re: Lovelock

A bit of common sense please.

Boffins propose satnav tracking for 'KILLER KOALAS'

Spoiler alert? Seriously.

Next you'll be telling the kids that Sant...... no, I can't type that.

Quantum crypto still not proven, claim Cambridge experts

Is the error message only for me?

Is anyone else seeing "Task Queue failed at step 5: Playlist could not be loaded due to crossdomain policy restrictions."?

First ‘three strikes’ decision handed down in NZ

Re: Three Strikes?

Good point: three warnings for two songs doesn't add up. She should appeal on that basis.

Snooping on movement can reveal smartphone PINs

I've seen this done on a website. Not sure what the point was there, but it's a great idea to prevent this phone exploit.