Posts by John 62

Paramount buries Dune remake

remarkably true to the book?

hmmmmmm.

I'd say the crazy stuff with the 'weirding modules' made the film even more flawed _because_ there were so many pages of dialog and narration lifted from the book.

I loved Dune (the book)

But I also thought it could have been edited better. I thought a few scenes towards the end were a bit rushed. However, it's real strength was not just the mostly great writing and the engaging universe that was created, but it was also an unsettling look into the exercise of power and influence. Paul Muad'dib, House Atreides and the Fremen were in no way whiter than white: they just weren't as evil as the Harkonnens.

Anyway, I think it's for the best that the film is being shelved for a while. The mini-series wasn't that long ago and if the memory of Lynch's awfulness can fade a bit, that's all the better. I also wouldn't mind a Fellowship of the Ring/Jurassic Park-style adaptation where some scenes and characters can be cut or consolidated to fit into a 2-hour film. Or I think it could be made into a double-feature. Part 1 ending with Harkonnens taking back Arrakis and Part 2 covering the rest. Arguably the book should have had that structure, too.

Finally, I don't care about Sting, but Patrick Stewart would have to be in any remake.

parallels

well, the Fremen were descended from a tribe called Zensunni and they had an Arabic-style language. Here on earth, Sunni Islam is the sect of the Arab/Bedouin muslims.

Where's the Dame Edna Everage icon?

Fukushima: Situation improving all the time

don't like the term Geiger counter?

Yeah! It's the Geiger-Muller counter, get it right!

[or is it an "halogen counter"?]

Channel 4 news

Channel 4 News was doing a sort of retrospective from Jon Snow who had gone to Japan shortly after the quake and toured around a bit to report on the extent of the damage. what I got from it was that they thought the nuclear situation was worrying and may be worrying long term, but they couldn't believe the UK news was spending so much time on what was happening at Fukushima Daiichi when most of the north-east of Japan's main island had be flattened and probably tens of thousands were dead and there was snow, too, falling on people with no homes.

BOFH: In distributed denial

Wireless vs bluetooth?

but isn't bluetooth wireless?

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

robotic_tourist

at the risk of blowing my anonymity, it was me who posted that comment on Ars. I found the tone of the articles quite similar basically saying that Fukushima is not apocalyptic and won't cause scores of deaths, but Ars had a bit more worry about the fuel pools and a bit less of the 'everything is fluffy kittens'.

and then I saw this phrase "where we are now is completely beyond our control, and that highlights some reasons why this can't be considered a _triumph_". (emphasis mine)

Can't think why I'd make the connection!

though there's plenty of criticism of the Ars piece in the pages of comments.

particulates

particulates get swept into the air even though the materials they are made from are dense. Fires, and explosions are good at creating particulates and giving them a boost upwards. Then, even if they don't go far, they're likely to contaminate the groundwater.

Water likes to be in oceans, but there are plenty of clouds.

Spent fuel pools

hmm, I'm in agreement that the reactors are not going to be a disaster, but the fuel storage pools are causing lots of people more and more concern because although they don't have the same potential to melt all in their path compared to the reactors, they also don't have anything like the shielding and containment the reactors enjoy. Hence the rods can burn in the air, uncontained, and cause all their nasty radio-isotopes (most notably Stronium and Caesium) to float off into the atmosphere, potentially to fall on California.

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Why shut down?

My question is why did the plant have to shut down? By shutting down, they lost their primary source of power for cooling. Was it in case there were dangerous aftershocks?

UK boffins to develop 'Solar Squaddie' electro-uniform

why not?

it'll let them go to sunny places on expenses

Bloke with hammer fixes London's Olympic clock

countdown to when?

They couldn't decide if they should have done the countdown to 2012 or 2013

Microsoft releases IE9 for chip happy Windows world

my sarcasm detector might be broken

are you at all serious?

if the APIs aren't there, are you going to backport them? Or if you're a 3rd party, reimplement them at the risk of patent violations? All at great cost with little benefit.

Windows 7 is NT version 6.1! Why can't IE9 be used on NT3.5? It's only three versions apart!!

European parliament loves the Tobin tax

taxes and results

tax windows and you get people filling in their windows.

tax the people who set the prices and they just set their prices higher.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in

aluminium clad?

Well yes, there are aluminium lids, but it also has an aluminium chassis. So it's not the exact analogue of Jack, Vera and Tyrone Duckworth's stone-clad place on Coronation Street.

@ sign

I like the Mac layout, except that # is Option+3 and it isn't even marked.

Lady Gaga puts the squeeze on breast milk ice cream

simple name change

All we want is Baby-o-gaga, baby-o-gaga!

[not really, of course the power of suggestion, for all you old-school Harry Hill fans]

The bigger irony is that we don't just steal milk from calves, the bull calves tend to be shot because they obviously won't produce milk, you only need a _tiny_ number for propagation of the species and bull calves born to today's milk-producers-on-legs aren't economical for beef, and no-one wants veal.

HP to put a WebOS in every PC

businesses wiping PCs

depends on the destination/volume of PCs

I was involved in rolling out 30+ Dell PCs once. We had the option of sending our own image to Dell and they would install it for us. In the end we had too much of a mix of images so we just did it on site, but the point remains that you don't _have_ to install your own image as soon as you get the PC.

Apotheker is ex-SAP

And if I'm not misrepresenting things, SAP has a bit of a 'we hate MS' culture.

Apart from that, it's very interesting. webOS is obviously native on ARM. Windows 8 will be released for ARM. Should Intel be worried that they could lose one of their larger customers?

How will consumers react? Will they even be aware that there is a second OS?

One thing I would like for iOS apps is try-before-you-buy via the iTunes Store on the desktop. would this enable it for webOS apps aimed at mobile devices?

Dixons Advent Vega

soda bread

needs buttermilk, as do scones. mmm, scones, mmm.

Phantom Menace to be released in 3D next Feb

Plinkett should be in 3D

I want my Pizza rolls! I mailed him over a year ago now. Mmmm. Pizza rolls in 3D. Mmmmm.

Second US 'secret space warplane' to launch tomorrow

x-37, son of shuttle

looks like one of the Shuttle's pups. it'll be so sweet when its eyes open, coochie, coochie, coo...

From messiah to pariah: The death of open source on mobile

how I feel about paying for apps

I am shocked and disappointed I am the first to post this

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps

Sheila's Fails? The statistics of biological risk

happy hardcore

what's not to like? :) Hard to get good happy hardcore now, though, especially since the rise of dubstep.

Intel: 'PC makers took the light out of Light Peak'

Apple missed a trick - 2nd Thunderbolt port, please

It was a good idea to bundle MiniDisplayPort into Thunderbolt (future displays won't need to hog a USB port for sound/FaceTime), but they should have included a second port on the MBPs. It's using the same MiniDP connector, but there are no thunderbolt-equipped ACDs (yet), so you plug in your legacy display and unless you get a hub (which Thunderbolt is supposed to obviate), you can't use any other Thunderbolt devices while your display is plugged in.

I also thought Thunderbolt was supposed to be protocol agnostic, so they could have removed the USB ports, added at least one more Tunderbolt and supplied adaptors for your legacy USB2 devices.

Samsung Wave II Bada OS smartphone

didn't stay HD when stretched to 47"?

It's either HD or it's not. It may be recorded in HD, but then either the DLNA software on the phone only transmits an SD stream, or it's still HD and the compression's really bad.

Bionic leg builder makes huge step in prosthetics

if will smith taught us anything

it's that we have to become like the robots to defeat them (or at least get an artificial arm and lead them to salvation from slavery to Viki and the 3 laws - very messianic film)

Google opens Android front in Zuckerberg data war

iOS Facebook app? WebOS?

Not sure what Google's problem is. They were able to merge your facebook friends with your google contacts, which seems exporty enough to me.

There's a button on the iOS Facebook app to sync your Facebook friends with you Address Book contacts.

WebOS merges your contacts with Facebook automatically.

What more does Google want?

Sheep as smart as humans: Official

smart collie

Collies in general are pretty smart, but I think that was one particular savant-dog that could remember 1000 names. I think they said most dogs could only remember about 7 names.

Apple iOS dominates Euro smartphone usage

the kids

all the cool kids get a cheap Blackberry from their parents so they can use BBM, and maybe facebook. Some richer kids get HTC Androids, or they get a Blackberry and an iPod Touch. The less-cool kids get a Blackberry lookalike from LG or Samsung or whoever, just to fit in.

Twitter cuts off two fat client apps

Oh noes!

my unofficial twitter client doesn't work! I'll have to tweet using the website!

Surprising lack of failwhale involved here.

Nissan readies ultra-low CO2 petrol engine for Micra

Toyota iQ?

Isn't it about 1/2 the size of a Micra?

Nokia: free phones for developers

how much does the developer programme cost?

I'd love to be an MSDN subscriber and get all that juicy software for free, but I can't justify the cost.

Countries where Facebook is not, yet, king

extreme?

I know, in Russia Facebook is 10th! How about Iran? Much more freedom there! Just don't go to the mountains with as much natural radiation as Chernobyl.

facebook stress?

or you could just moderate your usage. I used to feel under pressure to use FB instant messenger. Then I turned it off. Much better. But then I don't like instant messenger tools in general. I don't play Mafiawars or Farmville (or use any apps) and I get a perverse pleasure from clicking the block button if updates from any of my friends come up (over 200 apps blocked now!).

Oracle gives 21 (new) reasons to uninstall Java

Millions of applets?

"Aside from the security FUD, the author also throws around unsubstantiated claims that Java "failed on the desktop". I hear this being said a lot - but never with any evidence to back it up! Answer me this: if Java on the desktop is such a failure, why are there millions of Applets (lots of games) written in Java?"

You must show them to me! Or is your desktop a Blu-ray player? Or is my sarcasm detector a little wonky. Most little games are on the web and are made of ActionScript (aka flash)

I've seen Java used for cross-platform UIs once or twice, but those were in Industry rather than the home.

JEdit

Slow and hasn't been updated for a while, but quite handy. Otherwise I can't think of any other reasons for Java.

Inventor of the Workmate dies

Lotus Europa

weird looking, but was completely awesome in Sega GT2002.

20-tonne space truck heads for ISS

4,534kg

sounds like an american amount, or 10000lb

Anna Chapman to design Russian space uniforms

Hugh?

Oh, the other one! Ah, yes, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct Unamatrix 01, she'll do.

Piglet files

One of the few Lyndhurst roles I have good memories of watching.

NO-SH*T CURE FOR BALDNESS discovered by accident

Lt. Col. Kojak Slaphead III (Bald Brummies Against The Big-Footed Conspiracy Party)

Headslapping!

Peruvian spuds entombed in Arctic 'doomsday vault'

Potato Park?

Sounds like the latest theme park in Ireland!

The internet ate our homework

sellin' coal t' Nyucassle

when gettin' t'coal from t'pit t' t'power station were more expensive than shippin' t'coal from Australia t' t'power station that's what closed our pits! now we're doin' t' same t' Australian book shops.

Millennium bugs hit stock exchange

Mono

Seems like it's contracted the nuceoleosis, though! Maybe from kissing the MS boys.

Sarkozy: Microsoft represents all that is great about France

Sarko?

Isn't his family Hungarian?

IBM answer machine makes chumps of trivia chimps

everyone knows Jeopardy!

It's one of the central themes to White Men Can't Jump!

Watson vs Gloria would be a better contest.

What sealed Nokia's fate?

Frawnkensteen

Now that you mention it...

OS updates?

good luck with that!

Census threatens spies' cover

no religion?

that'll just make the churches redouble their efforts. in fact, other countries are sending missionaries to the UK because it's so godless and heathen.