Posts by ChrisB

Jeremy Clarkson tilts at windmills

If breaking the motorway speed limit is such a big deal

Why don't the government specify that every new car sold is fitted with a speed limiter set to 70mph?

My guess is that they're not bothered about the speed people drive at.

@Jamie re: One main gripe with Speed Cameras instead of Police.

Surely the car that was following you for that distance would have pulled out into an overtaking lane and overtaken you?

Or are you one of the many people who illegally drive in the outside lane of motorways regardless of whether they're overtaking other vehicles?

UK electricity crisis over - for now

Nucleotards

Quoted from http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oies_article.html

'At the current level of uranium consumption (67,000 tonnes per year) known uranium resources (2.8 million tonnes of uranium) would last 42 years – a fact highlighted by the European Commission in their Energy Green Paper [EC 2001]. The known and estimated resources plus secondary resources (such as the military inventory), a total of around 4.8 million tonnes, would last 72 years. Of course this assumes that nuclear continues to provide just a fraction of the world's energy supply. If capacity were increased six-fold then 72 years would reduce to 12 years. This is because nuclear energy, in terms of global energy supply, must increase by a factor of four to eight to make any significant difference to the use of fossil fuels around the globe. Consequently the expected lifetime of the uranium resource would fall by a similar factor.

The actual lifetime of the uranium resource will depend upon the technologies adopted as part of any new nuclear capacity. New reactor designs are more thermally efficient (up to 45% to 50% rather than 30% to 35%) which could extend the lifetime of the uranium resource by a factor of 1.7. Introducing a number of fast breeder reactors, to increase the efficiency of uranium consumption, might increase the lifetime of the uranium resource by a factor of 2. Even so, taking these two factors together alongside a six-fold increase in capacity, the lifetime of the known and estimated uranium resource would still be less than 50 years.'

Yes, let's build lots of nuclear power stations. That's a great long-term solution.

Armed robbers target Oz biker shindig

Statement

'The second perp ran straight through a plate-glass door and jumped from a balcony.'

Honestly officer. ;)

UCL preps clustered Dell supercomputer

And...

Will it randomly drop about half the disks in its array, and when they call Dell they'll be told it's a known issue with the firmware on that PERC controller?

Monster.com torpedoes rogue server as malware scam rolls on

Looking forward

I wonder how long before we're reading about a trojan that gathers personal information from Facebook pages...

Speedy evolution saves blue moon butterflies

@TLA

Thanks for your concern; however, the post was written in jest. Don't question my reasoning, question my sense of humour. ;)

Evolution?

Evolution? Tsk. Surely God was worried that one of His creations was about to be wiped out and performed a miracle.

Virgin throttles national cable network

Time to update the FAQs then...

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/faq/#downloadscapped still states

'Q: Is it true that downloads will be capped?

A: Our cable services are not capped and there are no intentions to introduce any usage limits - these are unlimited.'

I pay for a 20Mb connection, and I expect, within reasonable bounds, to get it. I can't believe I want to reminisce about the good old days of NTL already...