* Posts by The Indomitable Gall

1657 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Earth orbit for £1,000? You must be joking

The Indomitable Gall

Is the cost of reaching the launch site included...?

Cos I'm thinking of launching an expedition to Everest, and I've got a bit of luggage space....

Terrafugia flying car gets road-safety exemptions

The Indomitable Gall

Typical Lewis Page article...

Yup, that's Lewis Page all over: whining about yet another aviation project that's behind schedule, doesn't meet the promised spec, and facing spiralling cost increases...

Oh wait....

The Indomitable Gall

Landing on two wheels???

If your Skycycle(TM) needs folding wings anyway, there's no reason you couldn't have wing-mounted landing gear. They would double as ballast to stabilise flight.

Glasgow cammer not thrown in slammer

The Indomitable Gall

A different IR

There's already an IR scheme in use: some cinemas now have IR LEDs beside or above the screen. This serves the double purpose of reducing image clarity and messing with active autofocus.

IR has the side effect of increasing the temperature of whatever it hits, though, so it degrades the experience for the viewer....

LightSquared admits it will knock out 200,000 sat-navs

The Indomitable Gall

Military...?

As I recall, in earlier articles on this topic, it was noted that the GPS system operates on two bands, the second (encrypted) band being for military use only. Anything that cripples the civilian band is no great shakes to the military.

'Dirty' Hari defends radical interview mashup technique

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Nomenclature.

Acid comes in "tabs" -- little bits of paper that have been steeped in the drug. These tabs are produced in sheets, and so individual doses are marked out with a little design. Strawberries are a traditional favourite -- Strawberry Fields Forever is thought to refer to a sheet with a grid of strawberries on it. Imagination not required. The "acid man" smiley was a favourite during the acid house movement, but while people often claim the symbol means acid, that's usually denied by the people who were there, saying that the design only ended up on tabs *after* it became popular.

So no, "tab" is not short for "tablet".

But actually, in traditional pharmacology, "pills" and "tablets" were different. A pill is a ball of sugar and an active ingredient, and the pharmacist would roll it on a slab. A tablet was made by placing a similar mixture in a tray and then punching out oblong lozenges. This I learned on the Antiques Roadshow -- I kid you not! Someone brought in a fully-equipped "apothecary's bureau" and got given the full history.

Modern drugs are generally produced by squirting stuff into little molds, so the distinction is irrelevant now

The freakonomics of smut: Does it actually cause rape?

The Indomitable Gall

But attitudes are attitudes...

The problem is that even if you don't consider porn "art", it certainly falls into the category of "cultural artefact", and as such can transmit attitudes.

The problem is, it's not just "porn" that objectifies women, but even the "porn lite" in mainstream cinema. Most films play their rape scenes for titillation, and all too often the women make rather pleasant squealy noises. Compare with the French film "Irreversible", which has (by design) the most distressing rape scene ever to get a general cinema release, where Monica Belluci is screaming and wailing in a very upsetting manner.

So it's hard to make a conclusion from the figures. They don't say conclusively that "porn is good" -- it could simply be that once porn is allowed, you need to saturate the market; it could be that porn moulds the fantasies and desires that lead to sexual violent, and that once this genie is out of the bottle, you've got to keep feeding the beast to make sure it doesn't dine on the villagers....

Bloke ordered to remove offensive numberplate

The Indomitable Gall

Poserest plate ever.

BMWs are for posers, right?

4x4s/SUVs are for posers, right?

Personalised number plates are for posers, right?

Sotted in Edinburgh:

BMW X5 with the number plate "X5 CEO".

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSER!!!!!!

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Genuine Licence?

"Whe I needed a permit in Malta the DVLA faxed back their response to the query the same day. Some countries are not as helpful. Having said that the fax did have a typo on it so my Maltese ticket had an extra consonant in my surname."

Anonymous Choward?

Anonymous Cowhard?

Anonymous Cowarde?

Teenager tries to trade virginity for iPhone

The Indomitable Gall
Linux

It's not lack of interest...

It's not lack of interest, it's just that the Android GUI stops them being able to check the "man" page....

Proper scientists: Old folk should drink more, not less

The Indomitable Gall

Re: ... bu t...

"Presumably the shrinks' paper looked at alcohol and the elderly from a psychological point of view"

I'm still baffled as to how drinking more than a single glass of wine a day makes someone an alcoholic from a psychological view....

600 tonne asteroid in low pass above Falkland Islands - TONIGHT

The Indomitable Gall
FAIL

No, you don't have to think.

"Anyone else a little concerned that they only spotted this coming our way a few days ago?

...

You don't have to think hard what would've happened if it was a little bigger..."

No, you don't, do you.

If it was a little bit bigger, if would have been spotted a little bit earlier. This cow is small, those ones are FAR AWAY,

So no, you don't have to "think hard". Maybe just "thinking" would be enough...

Google Chrome extension busts Murdoch paywall

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Re: Nice selective quoting

"Murdoch's paywall isn't a paywall. It's a vain hope that everyone's browsers comform to Murdoch's rules. Guess what? They don't!"

Look, some of us have been saying that DRM is a bad thing because it generally degrades the product and breaks it on non-standard systems.

What NI have done is produce a very simple DRM that doesn't

A) install a rootkit

or

B) degrade the quality of the end-product by "watermarking"

or

C) degrade the quality of the end-product by lossy compression

or

D) stop us using the product on anything other than their platform of choice.

We ask the music biz to trust us to stick by the rules (or enough of us that they make money anyway) and we get a decent product as an end result.

Now while I wouldn't call Murdoch's output a "decent product", is it too much to accept that as DRM schemes go, this isn't really that bad or unfair?

The Indomitable Gall

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

The paywall isn't about web-browsers, it's about slabfondlers and phone fiddlers. Free internet access to the news was a threat to the marketability of subscription-based apps for the iPhone when the iPhone was really taking off, hence Murdoch killing it.

The standalone app may not be making much money yet, but once the Apple Newstand opens and magazine and newspapers are easier to find, the money's going to start coming in, and soon enough magazines and newspapers will turn a profit off the casual (virtual) coin.

The sad part is that the Reg will probably want in on the action... :-(

Apple strangleholds worldwide battery output

The Indomitable Gall
Thumb Down

Re: Once more..

Ah, so you've seen one of these non-existant Intel concept designs in the flesh, despite the fact that they only exist in Photoshop?

Yuh-huh.

Wikipedia awash in 'frothy by-product' of US sexual politics

The Indomitable Gall
Facepalm

Yes but....

There's a difference between

1) throwing your hands up in righteous indignation and calling someone unfit for public office

and

2) childish playground insults.

Childish playground insults allow you to be stereotyped as being... well... childish. It also suggests you have no valid argument to offer.

So while a small minority pro-gay activists are all congratulating each other on dealing a bloody blow against right-wing, neo-conservative fascism, they're really only fuelling the attacks against themselves.

Clever. Yeah, clever.

Kindle Store awash with auto-generated crap 'books'

The Indomitable Gall

Chain of trust...?

Well, why not have people stand up as witnesses for each other?

I mean, many self-publishers will know each other through writers' groups, conventions etc. Any complaints against a crooked publisher would be reflected in the writer's trust rating, which would make it impossible to recommend further friends and in extreme cases could result in loss of chart positions or expulsion from Kindle entirely.

The Indomitable Gall

Paperbook spam

Well sadly the spam problem doesn't extend simply to e-books, but also the paper book market.

Take this book for example:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Illustrated-Dictionary-Specially-Beginners-Including/dp/1152659359/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1308584815&sr=8-23

They've taken the OCRed version of a bilingual dictionary off archive.org and made it a print-on-demand edition.

OCR doesn't cope with dictionaries at the best of times, as they're peppered with abbreviation and there's barely a single complete sentence in them.

Couple that with a relatively minor language like Gaelic, which hasn't received a great deal of attention from the OCR side of things, and you have the recipe for a typographical car-wreck.

So, yeah, paperbacks and hardbacks are in the same situation....

BioWare blows brains with intro cinematics for Star Wars MMO

The Indomitable Gall

Expensive is the word...

Yes, I agree that most of that animation is noticeably animation, and not real video. I'd also like suggest that the animation on that short clip is really absolute state-of-the-art to the point that it is so expensive that you couldn't produce a whole animated film/series at that quality without making a mind-blowing loss.

Japanese gov makes Fukushima evac zone compulsory

The Indomitable Gall

I'll have a go...

Lewis,

Britannia rules the waves and all that, eh?

Well guess what, India got its independence quite some time ago, and Madras is now called Chennai. What's more, it's not a state, it's a city in the state of Andra Pradesh.

Consider him bashed.

Nokia floats out a collection of cool concepts

The Indomitable Gall

That last one...

It looks more like a concept alarm clock. Which would actually be quite cool. But as a phone, no.

The Sun still not shining on Nintendo's 3DS

The Indomitable Gall

Worse...

He was playing *while walking* and his heart rate was above resting. That's... normal.

He played it in a car, and felt sick. Ohmygodsomebodythinkofthechildren -- carsickness... in a car! The 3DS is 3v1l incarnate!

And what's this nonsense about a sustained heartrate of 85 causing circulatory problems? My heart rate never drops below 120 during a sustained workout (including half-day cycle rides). This is to be expected.

I think the good^H^H^H^Hcrap doctor is confusing cause and effect. People with certain cardiovascular and/or circulatory problems may have high heartrates, but having a high heart rate at a given time doesn't indicate cardiovascular or circulatory problems.

RSA won't talk? Assume SecurID is broken

The Indomitable Gall

Re: That's is truly shocking

@AC

" RSA terminology has a lot to answer for here - tell people to think of a PIN and they immediately think 4-digit number, when in fact it can be alpha numeric and longer than 4 digits - they used the wrong words, they should have called it 'password' which is what it is. "

It's not just that -- long-term SecurID users will remember the limit credit-card sized SecurID tokens with an onboard keypad for PIN entry, and the PINs were therefore restricted to 4-digit numerical PINs.

Even when overhauling technology, there's an attempt to paint it as the same thing -- RSA presumably didn't want to scare people off by changing the process too much and making it seem like something new....

Channel VAT loophole shrunk, not shut

The Indomitable Gall

Wait....

"Getting rid of it [LVCR] altogether would only serve to raise money for Royal Mail and parcel carriers who can pass the increased admin costs onto consumers."

Nope, it would cost the parcel carriers business, as people would be less liable to order small packets from overseas.

Extended Lord of the Rings Blu-rays to hit Blighty

The Indomitable Gall

Bluray & DVD

"the bonus features will be on DVDs, while only the films themselves are offered on Blu-ray - no surprise, since the extras will all be standard definition anyway."

Well they *could* have put all the SD bonus features on a single Bluray disc, but of course then it would have an impressive N where N = num(discs).

Microsoft Kinect powers DIY Eye of Sauron

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Not really

Even if the Kinnect is betterat locating people, they haven't used it in this demo. They don't appear to have calculated depth, only angle. Note how the eye looks out past the cameraman at the extreme angles -- it doesn't even know that it's in a different location from the camera.

Not technically impressive.

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

The Indomitable Gall

Animal homosexuality...

The problem with using animal homosexuality as a justification is that homosexuality occurs differently in every species.

"Lesbian" albatrosses do a lot of "couple" preening as they tend their nests, but have yet to be observed in any attempt at copulation. But they have been seen to mate with males (males who have other female partners) in order to be fertilised and lay eggs.

"Gay" penguins have generally turned out to be more "bisexual".

Male dolphins appear to use sexual behaviour with males as a bullying tactic when protecting territory. Or maybe they can't tell whether a "foreigner" is male of female.

The bonobo use genital contact as a social behaviour -- no climax, so behaviourologists don't generally consider it sexual.

The Indomitable Gall

And besides....

There are people who genuinely want to be "cured". Although most people (myself included) find the term "cure" both offensive and impossible, why stand in their way of making their own decisions?

The only valid argument against this app should be that it gives advice that has been shown to cause mental health problems.

IE: people should be free to look for a "cure" if they really, truly want, but at the same time, snake oil merchants should be closed down.

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

The Indomitable Gall

Apples and oranges, Originone

"But more importantly worldwide production of uranium last year was approximately 50,000 tons almost exclusively for power generation, compared to 5,990,000,000 tons of coal in excess of 5 billion of which is for eclectricity generation.

Coal is a naturally occurring mineral deposit. Uranium is found trapped in ores. One of the biggest sources of uranium is (IIRC) granite, and you have to mine a metric sh!tload of granite to extract a useful quantity of uranium.

The Indomitable Gall

@Ian Michael Gumby

"Do you not understand that the reactors survived a quake that was upgraded and registered 9.0?

That is beyond the designed rating. And yes, 9.0 is an order of magnitude worse than an 8.0.

"

As has been said several times -- 9.0 at the *epicentre* is different to 9.0 at the site. Most sources claim the quake was within operating margins at the site of the power plant.

The reactors failed as planned.

"The point is that the quake and tsunami combo punch was a disaster beyond what the designers comprehended."

Q. What is the main cause of tsunamis?

A. Earthquakes

If you plan for an earthquake in coastal Japan and don't plan for a subsequent tsunami, you are demonstrating a massive lack of judgement.

Fukushima reactor core battle continues

The Indomitable Gall

Mountain nuclear

Nuclear plants in the mountains would be much worse in disasters. Any local fallout of radioactive particles would be carried in the run-off from the mountains and would have the potential to contaminate a massive area. Also, the elevated position would spread any such fallout wider to start off with.

You pays your money, you makes your choice.

Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now!

The Indomitable Gall

Radon gas?

"Radioactive material leaks from your cellar into your house every day."

As the inhabitant of a third* floor tenement flat, the radon is vented out the windows of my neighbours and little reaches my flat.

* That would be fourth floor in USese.

The Indomitable Gall

Now come on...

"If this – basically nothing – is what happens when decades-old systems are pushed five times and then some beyond their design limits, new plants much safer yet would be able to resist an asteroid strike without problems."

You're ignoring the fact that this is a plant built by the Japanese, and the Japanese have always been meticulous in their nuclear safety.

The fact that the Japanese have built well-protected reactors doesn't change the fact that us pale-faced westerners have an ongoing habit of cutting corners and then when something goes wrong we shrug our shoulders and say "no-one could have anticipated a week of snow, not my fault guvnor."

Hated contractor tax might disappear

The Indomitable Gall

@Jim Coleman

" The main reason IR35 is hated is because it forces us to pay a whole bunch of EMPLOYERS NI on top of the EMPLOYEEs NI that permies have to pay. So us contractors end up paying MORE NI than permies do. For permies, the EMPLOYERS NI is paid by your employer, funnily enough.

<snip>

IR35 moves the ball too far into the other court, so we end up paying more than permies. "

I think you may have missed the point of contractor rates.

Contractor rates are higher than "permie" salaries because the contracting party doesn't have to pay for overheads such as bench time, holiday, sick leave and (drum roll) employer's NI contributions.

So paying more than "permies" is a natural consequence of being paid more than permies.

I'm on the verge of giving up the "permie" lifestyle and setting up my own limited company, and I'll try to duck any charging I can, but I'll not kid myself that I'm paying the same as permanent employees when I'm not.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Poor underpaid permies

@NogginTheNog

You might call it "fair reward for fair risk", but as a contractor your reward comes from the people who you work for. As a "permie" (for now), my reward comes from the people who I work for.

It is up to you to set your fees to offer fair reward, just as it is up to me to talk to me boss if I want a raise.

If you're out of work for 2 months between roles, you're not taxed for any income you make in that period, so what is the problem? Tax is calculated on annual earnings after all.

No-one's saying you're rich and should be taxed heavily -- we're saying that you should be taxed *just* *the* *same* *as* *us*.

XBox promo code exploit set Microsoft back $1.2m

The Indomitable Gall

Buying stuff...

A lot of the stuff available for points is other people's stuff, and Microsoft have to pay for it. The loss isn't the "buy" value of the points, but it could still be substantial.

Giant 5-year-mission aerial wing-ship to fly in 2011

The Indomitable Gall

Airships...?

The main problem with airships is that lighter-than-air is difficult to achieve in the stratosphere. Air pressure is around 1000 mb at sea level (IIRC). The stratosphere is between 1 and 10mb.

So while it can be done, it's not easy. At least an aerodynamic wing relies on the pressure differential of what little air there is.

Apple patent foresees ultra-svelte iDevices

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Obvious

"If it's so "fucking obvious" where are all the examples of it?"

It's not needed yet, because no-one's wanted to build something that thin.

It's still an obvious solution that anyone would have come up with when it became an issue....

The Indomitable Gall

Not only obvious....

This "invention" is not only obvious, it's actually just how current jacks work.

The locking mechanism on a standard jack socket is a single sprung contact, and the other contacts resist the motion in parallel. Most standard jack sockets would still work perfectly well if you took a saw to them and cut off the top and bottom.

In fact, I have a vague recollection of a gimmicky "credit card" FM radio that worked this way....

iDect iHome Android phone

The Indomitable Gall

OK, so....

This is also a wireless hub? No? Why not?

There's no point in convergence if you still need two devices!!!

Microsoft to Apple: 'Oh, yeah? Well, your font is too small'

The Indomitable Gall

Genericness is good.

There's nothing wrong with "genericness". It is a manageable word following the rules of English.

The so-called correct alternative is the latinate "genericity", which is a hideously clumsy word in English.

"Genericness" is a Good Word(TM).

VMware lets Apple fondleslabs tickle Windows VDI

The Indomitable Gall

Read what he wrote.

He said they're forced to "provide" subscriptions, not forced to "purchase" subscriptions.

Illinois scrubs death penalty

The Indomitable Gall

It's all a conspiracy...

They're abolishing the death penalty so we can extradite Assange.

Pass me the Bacofoil, my head feels naked...

Anti-religious campaigners smack down census Jedis

The Indomitable Gall

Re Ahem!

"

Plato -

- Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

"

Plato lived in an era when many "good people" treated other human beings as a type of livestock, to buy and sell at will.

All morality is relative, and the law codifies any given society's morality, giving the "good people" a benchmark of that morality.

"Corruption" is usually thought to apply to bad people, but in truth you can only corrupt what is good to begin with. Good people will make concessions to themselves on the grounds of being good people and therefore deserving.

I often find myself tempted to skip a red light on my bike, or ride up on the pavement for a bit, and it's OK because I normally don't do it, so I'm only rewarding myself for being a good person, and wasn't that convenient, and it didn't harm anyone, so I'll just do it this one more time, and again, and... and very quickly I was habitually breaking the law.

This is how society's morals decay. Everyone treats themselves as deserving to bend the rules. If the rules aren't codified (either by legislative means, or through a religious scripture), the bent rule becomes the new norm. And everyone treats themselves as deserving a bit of leeway from that norm.

This gives us the paradox of the Greek civilisation -- ruled by democracy, but maintained by slavery.

How languages can live together without killing each other

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Caló?!

"IIRC Caló is actually something akin to Cockney English, with similar origins (criminal argot)."

Nope. Caló (the Spanish variety) is one of several creole languages that emerged from the Romani gypsy community in Spain, through contact with the local languages -- see also Erramintxela (a mix of Romani and Basque) and Catalanorromani (self-explanatory).

These are certainly not criminal argots -- they didn't need new languages in order to "hide" from being understood, because Romani would have served that purpose fine. Romani is now dead in Iberia, replaced by Caló, Erramintxela and Catalanorromani in Spain and Calão in Portugal.

The Indomitable Gall

@Cameron Colley

The various dialects that emerged from the kingdom of Mercia after the collapse of the Danelaw (ie the traditional dialects of Scotland and NE England, not the modern "educated" Standard English spoken there) are less influenced by Norman than dialects spoken elsewhere in Great Britain, and they have strong influence from the language of the Danish vikings that are not found in the dialects spoken elsewhere in Great Britain.

These differences are systematic and consistent, and therefore describe two distinct... things. I call these two things "languages". You may not agree to the word, but linguistically, there are two collective "things" of some sort.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Portuguese a spanish language?

@Jose:

Portuguese is still spoken in some border regions of Spain -- particularly in Extremadura.

I don't think Franco was any more happy about that than the other languages of Spain.

The Indomitable Gall

Never trust a linguist....

Never trust a linguist who's ignorant of languages.

"the other three languages of Spain (Galician, Catalan and Basque)"

Ignores Aranès, Bable, Fala, Portuguese (yes, Portuguese),Caló, and many others besides.

The Indomitable Gall

Naw...

"If you want to be consistent, however, and you count Galician as a distinct language from either Portuguese or Castilian, then you would need to recognise Geordie or Scouse (say) as a separate language from English, which few people are willing to do."

Actually, you've picked a very good comparator here.

Geordie is more similar to Scots than English, and it's alignment as a dialect of English is more geopolitical than linguistic.

This is the situation with Gallician. Gallician is part of the same language group as Portuguese, but is aligned to Castillian for political and geographical reasons.

But Gallician is very definitely a different language from Castillian, and "if you want to be consistent", then if Gallician is a dialect of Spanish then so are Portuguese and Italian, and English is a dialect of Afrikaans, and eventually we ratchet back until all our languages are rebranded as dialects of "Earthish".

Hacker kills his own Pwn2Own bug for Android phones

The Indomitable Gall

I thought DVD players....

I thought DVD players generally ran a custom front end on an embedded OS...?