Posts by The Indomitable Gall

Leica M9 rangefinder camera

Ah but...

"I'd argue about the superiority of rangefinder cameras, too - I want to see what I'm photographing through the lens that's taking the picture, thank you - but I suppose that's horses for courses."

Well I want to see what I'm photographing too, and what I'm photographing should be what's in front of me when I press the button.

I don't even want a switchable lens -- my rangefinder has a fixed (moderately) wide-angle lens with a shutter in the iris. The short distance of travel for the shutter curtain gives me practically instant snaps. Much better for (eg) getting a picture of a dancer in which you can see his/her face mid-spin.

Want but can't have...

Too pricey for me sadly, and what with the general public's ignorance of the superiority of rangefinders, I can't see there ever being a digital rangefinder that's enough of a mass-market item to fall into my price range.

However, there's always a 35mm Russian or Far Eastern rangefinder or two on eBay for 20 quid of so, and I've already got one or two of those. Is there any kit out there that lets me attach a full-frame 35mm CCD to an old body? I realise I'd have to take the film door off, but that's cool -- I am talking about something without much value after all....

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic', says US privacy law expert

Uncommercial

My business, McKill and McCrazy Hitmen Ltd, is currently under investigation for certain illegal activities. I keep telling the Chief Inspector that his "laws" are all well and good, but they are completely uncommercial -- if I complied with these laws, my business would be unable to operate.

Does he listen?

No. Bloody plods.

Primate-phobic Brit attacked by crab-eating Macaques

And the monkey said...

"That woman fought like a dairy farmer."

Lightning bolt smites 60ft Jesus statue

Art critic...?

Well everyone knows Jesus can walk on water, so a statue of him half-submerged is a clear case of heresy....

Weights and measures...

It's traditional for the singular to be used with weights and measures -- using the plural is a relative innovation, and there's still plenty of people who will describe something as "3 pound 95" rather than "3 pounds 95".

And there's certain measures that never take a plural after a number: dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions etc may exist, but 24 is "two dozen", 200 is "two hundred", and so on.

Funny how "purists" are just as likely to defend neologisms as anachronisms. The only logic behind "correct" English is that it's whatever the person doing the correction speaks....

Easy-peasy science GCSEs binned

I refer the examiners....

I refer the examiners to Richard Feynman's account of his sabbatical in Rio de Janeiro in the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?" and ask them to look closely at whether or not they are actually teaching any science....

Lone workers will like being tracked, says Orange

Just what I was thinking...

"as long as someone is actively monitoring it or a system is in place that can recognise unusual behaviour and automatically notify someone."

Cos it's great they can retrieve my body after I've bled out, but it's no real use to me by that stage.

Just sell the (already well-tested) panic button tech that's out there.

Standards...

"Are kids to thick to use them these days?"

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. To [sic] easy.

Balinese lad seduced by bovine temptress

Ow, my heritage....

Thanks, Reg.

Please remember that many folk tales in many, many cultures revolve around animals that turn into men or women and conjugate with the locals. This particular story presents a rather unpleasant theory about the origin of these tales. I don't know if I'll be able to listen to a story about selkies or kelpies ever again....

Suspended-animation cold sleep achieved in lab

*sigh*

Scientific enquiry doesn't start with empirical data -- it starts with anecdote and observation, and someone asks "I wonder how that works?" and starts to investigate.

This story is about that very thing.

Man hears stories of unexplained phenomenon.

Man decides to investigate.

Man replicates something appearing to be the same as aforementioned phenomenon.

-->potential explanation.

Man performs further experiments on said potential explanation to see if it holds water.

Science starts with unknowns.

The discipline that starts with a bunch of knowns is called engineering, and it doesn't discover anything new.

Joke icon or not, that was a daft post.

Must have been relatively common in days gone by....

I'm guessing this wasn't unheard of in Ireland in days of old...

The tradition of the "wake" was to get lots of people in the room with the supposed corpse overnight and check whether he'd wake up. I mean, do you really want to warm up a room with a dead body in it? No. Unless you thought they might have just gone into "cold sleep".

I'm curious as to whether blood starts to settle out into component parts during cold sleep (do nemotodes have blood like ours?) -- the evidence the Romans took for Jesus being dead was that his blood had separated. Would make for an interesting bit of historical forensics.

World Cup stats fever - have you got the balls to win?

"hold the Jules Rimet Trophy aloft"

Nuff sed.

Sony 3D TV kit, PS3 games released tomorrow

You wot?

Buy a TV that can't be used for 3D yet and get a free game that you can't play in 3D yet? Where did I leave my wallet?

Links to blog in email made sender liable, says US court

Hmm....

""We conclude that section 230 prohibits 'distributor' liability for Internet publications," said that ruling. "We further hold that section 230(c)(1) immunizes individual 'users' of interactive computer services, and that no practical or principled distinction can be drawn between active and passive use. Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeal's judgment."

"No practical or principled distinction"... how so? The Usenet woman specifically chose that piece to upload, so she is (in practice and in principle) publishing.

ISPs are protected on the grounds that they are effectively functioning as printers and/or distributors do in the paper-based world, controlling the medium rather than the message.

In the physical world, a white van man who delivers boxes of magazines to local newsagents doesn't have to read every one to look for infringing content. He doesn't even have to know the titles of the magazines for delivery.

No choice, no editorial control, no volition.

The Usenet case had volition. Maybe the woman should have won on other grounds, but she spread the content of the article of her own volition, so she was not a mere "distributor".

Strippers hit historic Marconi HQ

Even worse...

Look at what ravers did to Mr Blobby's house!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220390/Pictured-The-abandoned-ruins-Mr-Blobby-theme-park-ravers-trash-site.html

Do you think trees grow themselves? Hell no! You're looking at the effects of the raver's favourite plant-food, mephedrone.

Subscribers get $3 each in Classmates suit. How much did the lawyers make?

As I was saying the other week....

People keep talking about how the threat of law suits keeps companies in line. Like hell it does. These settlements are always insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and the perpetrator always comes off lightly because they've saved enough money through whatever shady or careless practice they're hauled up for that they're still in the black.

There's no out-of-court settlement against a statutory fine, and it doesn't stop individuals suing for damages. "Small government" fails its electorate -- any civilised country should be protecting its citizens better than that.

Apple adds 'make the web go away' button to Safari 5

Clean and readable...

...yet unsustainably unprofitable...

Stephen Fry's truly terrible mistake

Killer quote!

"Willie Donaldson's 'Dictionary of National Celebrity' famously defined him as "A stupid person's idea of a clever person""

This I shall remember. It is good.

But is Fry really an actor?

He's certainly getting a lot of acting work these days, but I don't really think of him as "an actor" any more. He's a personality, a commentator, and perhaps the closest thing the average TV viewer will see to a philosopher.

When he sells tea, I still see the actor. But what I see in this campaign is different -- I see a trusted media figure, a man of unquestionable intellect, giving me advice. (Fortunately, I already know his advice is wrong.)

You can say that this is my fault, but it's pretty damned normal really, and is, after all, the reason they're using him for the campaign in the first place.

6music, eh?

You do realise that 6music is on the chopping block, don't you? Hardly worth going DAB for that....

New cycle helmets emit stench if they need replacement

Well, for my part...

I had a pretty spectacular fall and the helmet absorbed the impact well enough that I didn't even realise my head had contacted the ground. It also ensured that neither my face nor my glasses connected with the nasty rough bitumen --either would have been messy.

Gadget tax needed 'to save US newspapers'

How dare you!!!

"There will come a time soon when MPs will easily be able to ignore whatever crap papers decide to use as a dog whistle for easily enraged idiots (immigration anyone?)"

Immigration is a serious problem and not just an issue for "easily enraged idiots". These people aren't coming over here and doing unpleasant jobs like toilet cleaning and sewer maintenance at thoroughly pitiful wages.

Nonononono.

They're squatting in our sheds and eating our swans while living in posh flats paid for by the taxpayer and dining in swanky restaurants at our expense!!!!!

Pacific islands growing not shrinking, says old study

Escrow...?

Surely if there's doubt over the legitimacy of compensation claims, the courts shouldn't be ordering one way or the other, but making a provisional judgement that places the compensation in escrow pending final evidence of the damage (ie islands going under), with a time limit? The funds would then either be used to relocate the displaced population (surely the point) or returned to the other party.

That way no-one loses.

US Navy develops toss-proof robot crane

Hmm....

Combine with this related story...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/self_assembly_floating_fortresses/

...and it looks like there's a genuine plan coming together.

Steve Jobs beheads iPad apps for acting like desktops

Irony...

"I have been a regular customer of Apple since the summer of 1984."

You couldn't have picked a more ironic year, given the circumstances.

Skype to start charging for iPhone VoIP

No, this is why...

This is actually why we need the traffic shaping.

There are multiple use cases for the internet.

Some of these need near-instant response speeds -- eg VoIP.

Some of these require large transfers over a more flexible timeframe -- eg downloading Linux ISOs.

Some are less fussy -- eg surfing (your download time is now very often shorter than the browser rendering time).

Traffic shaping allows us to dedicate the resources that each needs. We dedicate the voice bandwidth to voice users at the cost of longer download times for other uses -- shouldn't voice users pay for that?

Top 500 supers – The Dawning of the GPUs

The USA...

...maybe the government should be asking its agencies to time-share? I mean, do they really need all that power all the time?

Woman sues Google after highway knockdown

You know what?

There's probably already been lots of people who *have* been killed because of this. We only haven't heard about it because they're dead and their iPhones got trashed in the accident.

This is actually dangerous, you know.

A possible explanation

"It is of course puzzling why Rosenberg did not use the evidence of her own eyes to decide Google Maps' instructions were best ignored.

Almost as puzzling as why she has set the lower bar for suing the world's biggest ad broker at a mere $100,000."

Her lawyer probably figures that given that she ignored the law and (presumably) at least one "no pedestrians" sign, she has a better chance of winning a claim centred on direct costs than punitive damages.

Quit Facebook Day flops

Erm... first I've heard of it.

Didn't even know it was happening.

BBC One HD to launch this autumn

HD Mux? Inefficiencies!!!

The idea of a HD mux is flawed if there's going to be simulcast HD/SD channels. Popping BBC1 HD on the same mux as BBC1 SD would allow them to broadcast shared audio and red-button data streams.

The promise of digital TV was greater flexibility and interactivity, and clever use of bandwidth. This fails to fulfill that.

There should be one BBC1 "channel" on a single mux, broadcasting "in HD (where available)" with non-HD sets receiving an SD stream.

The current state of affairs is a weak hack, nothing more.

Want nips like church coat pegs? Click here

So are these designed...

Are these aimed at people going au natural but without natural pointiness, or are they designed to go on top of bras and reinstate lost nipplage while allowing for extra support and shaping?

I know, I've thought about this too much, but it's Friday and my most trusted source of news is talking about lady-bumps.

Copernicus reburied with full Catholic honours

As others point out...

Copernicus was never considered a heretic, and Copernicus was buried (as the article says) in a Christian grave like any other person of his standing.

The stuff that happened later with Galileo Galilei was a battle of scientific egos and bad judgement on GG's part -- the then-pope was a then-well-reknowned-but-long-since-forgotten scientist (most of the popes of that era had come through the university system, which at that time was still part of the monastic tradition) and Galileo basically picked a fight with him.

The scientific establishment has a history of dismissing ideas because some influential bigwig disagrees with the theory. The only difference here was that the pope had a great deal more power than the chairman of the Royal Society, and anyone who effectively accuses the most powerful man in the world of being thick is really heading for trouble.

Of course, the fact that the pope was more than a little vindictive about it doesn't say a great deal of good about the Catholic church, but that's a different matter.

'World's largest' airship inflated in colossal Alabama cowshed

The answer to the bouyancy problem is simple:

OK, so you need to lose lift as you lose weight in fuel. So what if your fuel was your lifting agent? This takes care of itself.

That means one thing and one thing only: hydrogen. Unsafe, you cry? Well they keep trying to put it in our cars, so it can't be that bad.

Anyway, a hybrid helium/hydrogen airship could be very safe, with an envelope-in-envelope design.

Have an outer inflation chamber (or series of chambers) filled with helium, and an internal chamber filled with hydrogen. In that way, if the hydrogen cell ruptures, it leaks into a 100% inert atmosphere and cannot explode. For hydrogen gas to escape, there would need to be a total failure of the entire balloon system, which would probably mean a fatal plummet anyway, so the added risk from the hydrogen is negligible.

Besides, the Hindenberg exploded because of a fault in its skin and problems with sparking from static electricity -- modern materials aren't as succeptible to such problems, so a leak would simply be a leak. Explosions are unlikely.

The commercial cuckoo hiding in the BBC's global mission

Grrr....

"As far as I can tell it spunks its money up the wall on football rights and overpaying for TV programmes that have built a faithful audience on terrestrial."

Grrrr.... yes.

That is so effing irritating. It's like a weird messed up sort of bait-and-switch where Channel 4 becomes the bait, the viewer is the fish and Sky is a big hairy fisherman who snatches you out on a Lost-shaped hook.

They also screw you over with the bundles -- it's impossible to buy the channels you want without paying for half-a-dozen Murdoch channels you *don't* want.

This is where all the money comes from. ITV makes its money from rubbish people watch, Sky makes its money from rubbish no-one watches and funnels it all into a handful of flagship programs everyone wants to watch.

Was Microsoft's Office 2010 worth killing Clippy?

Re: Heaven's above

Well, I can see nothing wrong with the OP's English, but you, on the other hand, may want to reread your title....

(The Indomitable Gall is an English-language grad and an internal comms professional.)

Bill Gates backs ball-busting ultrasound

OOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

I really don't like the sound of that.

In fact, it gives me the willies!

LimeWire induces infringement, Judge rules

YouTube next...?

They may not actively encourage people to infringe, but they're certainly not doing a hell of a lot about it, and they're doing it for the good of their own wallets....

Vote Lib Dem, doom humanity to extinction

There's more to it than that, Page.

" there's nothing to say that the same exaggerated terror of weapons application wouldn't stifle fusion the way it is stifling fission. "

While the whole weapons-grade fuel thing is worrying, many reasonable people will do a quick risk-cost analysis on potential problems at the power stations, and work out that the potential damage done by purely accidental failure (and the damage already done by previous accidental failure) really is too high to accept even if the risk of failure was lower than it is.

And before you say it, all the "lessons learned" at Douneray, Windscale/Sellafield, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are valueless, because the lessons we have allegedly learned are all in the realms of "avoiding the same mistakes", not in the realm of "avoiding making any mistakes". All of these were at root the result of sloppy management, so even if you address the actual physics/mechanics/engineering of the fault, there's still the whole culture of corner cutting that has to be addressed.

And I know that we don't officially "cut corners" anywhere in UK business, we officially "trim the fat", but that only leads to us hiding the corners we want to cut behind a chunk of fat...

Apple rejects crazy canuck's seal bludgeon game

If you want to know what iThink...

iThink it was just the name they didn't like -- all your I is belong to Apple!!!

Pirate Bay co-founder hopes it will die

Hmm....

Facilitated free copying then turned up and said: let's do something that makes money.

I walks like blackmail and it quacks like blackmail....

'Phantasmal' bioweapon drug-sweat microfrogs bred in UK

New venture....

OpenPressRelease.org has completed its alpha pilot phase with amphibian specialists and will go into public beta on the 1st of May.

Asteroids the source of Earth's water, NASA suggests

Re: orbits?

But everyone knows the world revolves around the Square Mile -- that's why the M25 is known as the London Orbital.

Quoth NASA

"water ice left over from the solar system's origin 4.6 billion years ago"

So it would seem that water formed in the birth of the solar system. The sun is, after all, made of hydrogen and the birth of the solar system created oxygen, so it had to happen.

The water came from the sun, at the dawn of the solar system.

Apple, the iPhone 4G, the cops and the click-tart

Filthy lucre

" We don't criticise him [Denton] for paying for stories - we don't do that ourselves,"

Oh well, I guess someone else'll get my exclusive Nexus 2 handset, as found in the sofa at a Mountain View lap dancing club....

Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News

Percentage point?

"*NASA, the best funded space agency of the human race, boasts a budget of less than $20bn - a small fraction of a single percentage point of US government spending"

Surely "a small fraction of a percent". Percentage point is meaningless in this sentence....

Reverse-engineering artist busts face detection tech

@Ru

"Small, bright point sources of light do a lousy job of 'jamming' CCTVs and the like. It'll work if you strap a car headlight to your hat, perhaps... nothing else is going to be really powerful enough to dazzle the camera."

I don't think he's talking about dazzling the camera -- rather he's suggesting that the pattern matching may rely on patches of light and dark not in the visible spectrum, so use of IR masking and/or emission would change the image that the computer sees into "not a face" without affecting the image a man looking you in the eye would see.

Facebook sinks Lite

I would have used it...

I have a MIPS netbook that just can't handle full-fat Facebook. As a travel gadget it's dead handy, though -- reasonable battery, optional wifi etc. Facebook always refused to let it use the mobile interface and redirected me to www. -- I couldn't be bothered faking the browser string so I gave up.

Given the "getting stuck in lite" thing, I didn't attempt it.

So I just don't use Facebook on the road.

Broadband boss: 'The end of freeloading is nigh'

I don't think he's joking per se...

I think what he's trying to point out is that with unmetered access, unicast IPTV is as "cheap" as broadcast TV to the punter on the street, or even cheaper, if you don't currently have a Freeview box or sattelite receiver. The benefit of IPTV is the availability of on-demand viewing. It is therefore a "better product" at the same price point, so the way things are at the moment, the bedroom PC will start to be used as a replacement for the bedroom TV. I don't have a Freeview dongle for my laptop, for example -- I just use iPlayer and 4OD. I even use iPlayer sometimes when I'm watching live.

So by having unmetered access we discourage people from using the efficient, robust and well-developed broadcast infrastructure and instead consume the internet's finite resources. Not only do most people not realise that there is no "broadcast" on the internet, but even those who do (eg. me) don't really care enough to conserve.

So we wouldn't expect the metered family to run up £600 a month -- we wouldn't expect the capacity requirements of a metered internet to be anywhere near as high as that of an unmetered one.

Ask yourself this. Many phone companies offer unlimited free calls. Would they continue to do so if people started listening to radio over the phone? Would they have the capacity?

Same idea.