Posts by Colin 4

Ideal solar system for SECOND EARTH found – and it's just 186 light-years away

Re: Oh, dear...

I bet you've got a terrible pain in all the diodes down your left side too, right?

Short circuit at Large Hadron Collider slows return to matter-mauling

Re: At last!

Or they could even turn it up to 13, if i remember my maths correctly ...

HOLY SEA SNAILS! Their TEETH are strong enough to build a plane

Re: Big news for the arms trade

made with real limpet, so you KNOW they're good!

SWELLING moons of ice dwarf Pluto snapped by NASA spy-probe

neptucrats, more like - surely plutocrats would have gone the other way ;-)

No sail: NASA spikes Sunjammer

Re: How big?

It FURLS to the size of a dishwasher.

It UNfurls to 1200 square metres, or a square nearly 35 metres on a side ...

Presumably the mass figure includes the furling/unfurling mechanism, attitude thrusters, comms equipment, etc etc

Planetary Society

They're working on this too, smaller scale though and they have to wait for a lift ... http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-sailing/

LICKED: Behold my TOAD-PROOF ERECTION, boasts Aussie boffin

Toad Licking - it's for the dogs

Dogs love 'em. They become addicted and go out at night searching for a fix ....

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/thefeed/story/dogs-licking-cane-toads-how-dogs-are-using-cane-toads-get-hallucinogenic-high

Boffins erect semi-hard 3D silicon: Pop-up micro-machines breakthrough

6 pack, anyone?

Looks like the world's smallest 6-pack holder

ALIEN fossils ON MARS: Curiosity snaps evidence of life

Keep calm and look for alternate explanations

I really, really hope this is truly fossils of life!

But it's a bit premature to omit "possible" from the title, dontcha think?

WAY too early to be popping sparkling white wine corks .... but still - exciting possibility !

Beer icon, 'cos it's certainly at the toast by pint stage ;-)

Boffins unearth the ultimate antique art - 500,000 years old

Relativity

It's clearly an early attempt to describe time dilation a'la Special Relativity, using the "light clock on a passing train" thought experiment.

A bit of credit where it's due please people.

UK.gov pushes for SWIFT ACTION against nuisance calls, threatens £500k fines

Spam the bastards back!

As a father of 2, I can't ignore any call with ID withheld unless I know for SURE my kids are with me or otherwise OK - 'cos you never know.

However, whenever I get a human spam call with no ID nowadays, and it's not TOO inconvenient (like, I'm on the bog for example), I like to have a bit of fun with them ...

"Hello sir, my name is Brainless Moron calling from Bastards Incorporated - I wonder if you can spare a few minutes of your time?"

"Sure, but firstly do you have a pen and paper handy?"

"Er ... yes, why?"

"Excellent. Right, hold on while I give you an account number and sort code ..."

"Er .. what? Why?"

"Well, so you can pay for my time of course. My fee for listening to you is £50 per hour, is that OK? Once I confirm your payment, you may call me back"

"...!?"

"Yeah, well now you know how it feels, you bloodsucking scumbag. Now why don't you go and get a REAL job doing something useful. Or just jump off a cliff. Whatever."

<click>

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 claimed lives of HIV/AIDS cure scientists

NOT A CRASH !

I'm a bit sensitive to this due to arranging an international holiday for my slightly flight-nervous missus and our kids. It's NOT a crash, any more than 9/11 was building collapse due to structural failure (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of my chosen comparison)! It was blown up, so can everyone stop calling it a bloody crash please!

Boffins make noise about D-Wave chip: it seems quantum

incoherent

indeed.

Brit boffin brews INSTANT HANGOVER RELIEF

Addictive

Oh, I guarantee it will be addictive.

Any pleasurable substance or behaviour can become addictive - the brain seeks the reward, whether it's an adrenaline rush, sexual high, or drug-induced headspin.

Fleet of driverless pods to take over Milton Keynes town centre

12mph [≈ World record time marathon, 2h03m59s]

Would everyone please stop entering 12mph in their comments ?

My entire page is filled with "[≈ World record time marathon, 2h03m59s]" courtesy of Dictionary of Numbers

Oh no, I typed 12mph too. sorry ...

Is this the silicon chip KILLER? Boffins boot up carbon-nanotube CPU

Re: "without having to look for imperfections or even know where they were"

I suspect they mean designing a manufacturing process which is self-correcting and will automatically eliminate defects - like the bit where they run a current through the CNTs and the closed ones vaporize, maybe they can do something similar for misaligned CNTs.

So they just apply these processes, and they know all the dodgy CNTs will have been blown away.

Warming: 6°C unlikely, 2°C nearly certain

@If you want a stable climate

Man has been wiped out regularly ? Wow, nice job re-evolving us to the same species every 150000 years, evolution !

Hitchhikers' Guide was WRONG, Earth is not in a galactic backwater

stupid bloody reality

Er ... no. The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Graphene QUILT: A good trampoline for elephants in stiletto heels

Re: P-P-P-P-P-P-P-

Nearly perfect ! Best I can come up with to help is the grammatically dubious but poetically plausible :

"Page provided perfect prose pondering performing pachyderms perched precariously 'pon pencil proof planar products"

Curiosity succeeds – Mars was wet enough for life!

Re: What Are We Waiting For?

Nope, the mission is intended to determine whether Mars has ever had environmental conditions favorable for life, NOT to find evidence of life itself.

US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas

Re: UK: Cyclists already pay for the upkeep of roads, as do pedestrians

"All the extra cycle lanes" eh ? All they do around here is paint a line a couple of feet in from the edge of the road and call it a "cycle lane".

This has rather hilariously resulted in quite a lot of roads where the car lane is actually not wide enough to FIT a car. Especially hilarious when there's a bike going each way, and a bus going each way ...

Soak up CO₂ with sponges, says CSIRO

CCS is dangerous fantasy

CCS is such a bad idea. Eventually, no matter what we do with it, it will burp it's way out and then we're stuffed.

And in the meantime it diverts resources from ACTUAL solutions. The future is carbon-neutral power generation, that's just all there is to it.

El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa

Luxury

In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

A cup ' COLD tea.

Without milk or sugar.

OR tea!

In a filthy, cracked cup.

We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

Rocket 'Grasshopper' leaps higher than tall building in single bound

Sure, it may not be easy, but ...

SpaceX are a business after all - they aren't out to throw money away and they're doing pretty well.

Elon's a very switched-on guy and I'm sure they've thought this through.

I predict they'll make this work, despite all these objections.

Einstein's brain FOUND ON APPLE iPAD

Re: Einsteins Greatest Mistake

Presumably if he'd done that, there would also be an Android app ...

NASA captures mind-bogglingly gorgeous solar video

Re: Re: Time Lapse?

Yep, sure is, can't miss it !

Surfing ROBO-shark hunter stalks great whites along US coast

Surely

they're using fanbuoys ?

New UK curriculum ramps up lessons in SPAAAACE

This is new then is it ?

I did all of this in school. That was Australia though, and a couple of decades ago - has it always been this slack here ?

Apple slaps mega-solar panel field on new ENORMO data centre

re: Solar = Joke

What a ridiculous comment ! All our power comes from our star. What's so ridiculous about cutting out the middlemen ? We're going to have to do it eventually.

Oz robo-soldiers in US Marines' firing line

hoodies !

you gotta love that they're wearing hoodies ... if they had trousers no doubt their jocks would be showing too

Russian probe engines crap out on way to Mars

What about the LIFE "astronauts" ?

What about the Planetary Society LIFE experiment ? Spare a thought for the hardy Tardigrades, Conan the Bacterium, and all the other microscopic astronauts attempting to survive the journey ?

Come on you Russians, where's the guy from Armageddon bashing it with a wrench shouting "this is how we fix things on Russian Space Station!" ?

Love Bug malware-inspired film gets big screen premiere

one to miss

well, that looks crap.

Indonesian anti-smut MP caught ogling filth

grabbing coat now ...

Fell on his Pork sword, presumably ....

mine's the one with tissues in the pocket

Windows 7 gets the Star Wars treatment

Not a Fit

"was not a fit with the Windows brand" .... yeah, the jokes on these shows work.

Nokia talks Pure typographic cobblers

cats

"instinctively kicked the cat" ... brilliant, nearly lost my fish finger sandwich there ...

Leslie Nielsen dead at 84

favourite quote

Lt. Frank Drebin: ...blowing away a fleeing suspect with my 44 magnum used to mean everything to me, I enjoyed it, well who wouldn't?

Crash grounds RAF Eurofighters - for Battle of Britain Day!

Mrorons ...

What else would you expect from "moron" airforce base ? That was just asking for trouble ....

Middle-aged sex is crap: Official

69

Ironically, thats how many comments there were when i posted this .... I'm guessing there's not much of that going on either ....

'The LHC will implode the Moon or PUT OUT THE SUN'

@Black Holes

I think its about the seperation - a singularity has infinite density and zero size / radius so as the gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the separation distance, other particles can get so close that the gravity is much higher. It only needs to eat enough other particles to outweigh the energy of the hawking radiation and it will keep growing forever. Then again, I may not have much more idea than you. No doubt some more boffinly commentards will sort us out shortly ....

NASA's WISE opens 'candy store of images'

WOW

That is SO frikkin' awesome !

Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you

more research required!

tut tut ... as any trekkie worth his salt knows ... the warp drive compresses space in front of the ship and stretches it behind. the ship never moves even close to light space relative to the real space around it.

New cig peril: Third-hand smoke coats puffers in poison

what a load of crap

that is all.

DARPA scientists demand lightning on tap

DARPA

Nice DARPA description Lewis .. back on form !

'Hybridisation' tech to quintuple battery life

More effort on DARPA descriptions please

I remember when DARPA descriptions were sure-fire keyboard-ruiners. Like how about this gem :

"The Pentagon's famous bad-boy scientists, DARPA* - who slap the pendulous jowls of established wisdom with the gauntlet of disregard ?"

Or this one :

"the famous Pentagon research bureau which, when scrumping apples from the tree of knowledge, ignores the low-hanging fruit in favour of the harder-to-reach pomaceous treat which often turns out to be beyond its reach."

Or :

"DARPA* - who are to ordinary insane scientists in their dungeon laboratories as platinum-selling popsters are to teenage-saddo garage bands"

Nowadays you hardly even seem to be trying Lewis. "renowned Pentagon brainiac-breeding bureau" - not bad, but not brilliant.

US, China play footsie with joint space mission

yeah right

The US are obviously just wetting themselves ... they know the best they will manage in the next 10 years is to get halfway back to where they were in 1969, whereas the Chinese will probably have a yum cha restaurant at the moon's south pole by then. So the seppo's figure - lets jump on their coat-tails ....

New 'reversible' paralysis-ray turns victims blue, flaccid

keyboard please

'flaccidity and empurplement'

got some coffee out my nose that time, cheers !

Lily Allen exits Twitter, bins BlackBerry

hasnt gone far enough

hopefully the no-talent bimbo will cry off microphones and cameras too, and we wont have to see or hear her ever again.

Giant megaships to suck 'stranded' Aussie gas fields

@Standard Units

By my calcs, that ship will be 52.0664 Double Decker Buses / 3.4711 Brontosauruses long, weighing in at an impressive 142.8571429 MEGAJubs ! Thats Alotta Jubs !

Swedish bloke attempts lactation

idiot

obviously skipped biology class.

although if he tries hard enough he might get some blood out ...

Illinois bright spark sparks car inferno

Natural Selection

Damn, natural selection was thwarted again by society ! These genes will now probably be passed on to the next generation. Human Devolution continues apace ....